Sichuan Rural Cooking: Preserve Giant Pork Belly for a Year

What this video shows

A rural cook in Sichuan spends a day curing and preserving a large slab of pork belly, working through a process that stretches across a week and ends with meat meant to keep for a year. The pork is rubbed with salt, chili powder, and Sichuan pepper powder, left to cure for seven days, then washed, blanched, and steamed. Fat trimmed from the meat is rendered into lard, and the finished pork is sealed for long-term storage. Later, the cook prepares several dishes using the preserved pork alongside vegetables from a neighbor's house, including taro, sweet potato, and green vegetables, and serves them with rice and pickled purple cabbage.

At a glance

What stands out

The preservation method is built on time rather than refrigeration: a full week of curing with salt and spices before the meat is washed, blanched, and steamed, then sealed to last a year. Nothing is wasted — fat trimmed off the pork belly is rendered down into lard, which is then used to cook other dishes. Ingredients move between households, with taro and other vegetables coming from a neighbor's house rather than being bought. The meal itself is layered: preserved pork is steamed with taro, sweet potato, and vermicelli in one dish, while garlic sprouts and pickled purple cabbage are cooked separately and eaten with rice.