This Thai Coconut Rice Bowl, with marinaded pork, roasted broccoli, and quick-fried red bell pepper, will impress your guests.
Thai Coconut Rice Bowl
Course: DinnerCuisine: Thai4
servings50
minutes20
minutes1
hour10
minutesMost of the prep time (30 minutes) is fully unattended.
Ingredients
2 limes: one finely zested and juiced, and one cut into 6 wedges
3-4 cloves finely minced garlic (see notes)
1 Tbs (packed) brown sugar
2 Tbs fish sauce
1 lb thinly sliced pork loin
1 can unsweetened coconut milk (1¾ cups)
1 can water (1¾ cups)
1¾ cups jasmine rice
1-2 thin slices (peeled) fresh ginger
1½ tsp Kosher salt
4 Tbs olive oil, divided (see notes)
18 oz broccoli
2 red bell pepper, cut into matchsticks
Pinch of red pepper flakes
Toasted sesame oil
Fine sea salt
Chopped or crushed peanuts
Chopped cilantro
Directions
- Push the bottom of a 1-gallon freezer bag into a 4-cup measure and fold the lip of the bag over the container. Place the lime zest, garlic, brown sugar, and fish sauce into the bag and use a thin, flexible spatula to mix it until the sugar is dissolved. Add pork loin, remove the bag from the 4-cup measure, seal it, massage the pork to get the marinade all over it, and let the pork marinate in the fridge for at least 30 minutes, but no more than 4 hours.
- Meanwhile, pour the coconut milk and water into an Instant Pot. Add the rice, ginger, and salt. Stir thoroughly. Set the pot’s to RICE function to normal; natural release for 20 minutes. Stir with a flexible spatula. Allow the KEEP WARM function to run, with the lid screwed onto the pot.
- As the rice is cooking, separate the broccoli florets from the stems. Slice each floret in half down the center, creating at least one completely flat side. Peel the woody outer skin off the stalks and slice them into coins. Toss the broccoli generously with 2 Tbs olive oil. Arrange on a sheet pan or in a shallow roasting pan, cut sides down, spacing so that the none of the pieces touch. Sprinkle with salt. Preheat the oven to convection 425°F, and when it’s ready, slide the broccoli into the lower middle position (for me, that’s Rack Position 6). Roast for 12 minutes. As the broccoli comes out of the oven, immediately sprinkle with lime juice to taste, red pepper flakes, and a drizzle of toasted sesame oil; toss.
- Preheat a large, cast-iron skillet over highest heat until very hot, 4 minutes. Meanwhile, transfer to the pork to a paper-towel-lined plate. Pour 2 Tbs olive oil into the hot skillet, wait a few seconds until it shimmers, pat the top of the pork with another paper towel, and transfer the pork to the skillet in an even, non-crowded layer. (You may have to do this in batches.) Cook, undisturbed, covered with a spatter screen, just until none of the pieces has any pink, 1 minute per side. If you get browning, that’s perfect – but don’t overcook the pork in an effort to get some. Remove to a plate and season to taste with sea salt. Add the bell pepper to the pan, distribute the pieces evenly, and let cook to your liking (perhaps 2 minutes). Remove to a plate.
- Place 2-3 scoops of rice into a bowl, and arrange pork, broccoli, and peppers around or over it. Top with crushed peanuts and cilantro. Accompany each serving with a fresh lime wedge.
Notes
- Do not substitute granulated garlic for the fresh garlic in the marinade. If you don’t have fresh garlic, just skip it – the pork will still taste good.
- Substitutions: a higher-smoke-point oil for the olive
You taste all the flavors in this dish separately, and they form a nice ensemble. Everything tastes very fresh and vibrant.
Guest-Worthy:
I would serve this to guests in a heartbeat. In order to do that, you’d have to do as much as you possibly can in advance, so that your kitchen isn’t a complete disaster when the guests arrive. All the chopping, all the slicing, all the measuring. Keep in mind that the rice could spend two hours in the Instant Pot on the “keep warm” function and still be fantastic. (In terms of food safety, it could be in there twice that long – but don’t take food safety advice from me.)
Ingredients:
- Don’t fear the fish sauce. I’ll freely admit that I don’t like the smell of it straight from the bottle. I don’t like the smell of it in the marinade. I don’t like the smell of it as the pork is cooking. But once the pork is done and you’ve hit it with a bit of salt, the flavor is spot on.
- You can get by with half the broccoli and bell pepper. (In that case, shorten the broccoli roasting time to 14 minutes.)
Cooking:
- This is a production. You’ve got the Instant Pot, the oven, and the stovetop all working at the same time.
- You’ll feel a bit of pressure to get the pork, broccoli, and bell pepper all done and hot at the same time. The trick to that is to have the marinaded pork on the paper towels and ready to go. Then, after sliding the broccoli into the oven, you’ve got about five-ten minutes before you have to start frying the pork.
- If the rice is too wet, just give it “keep warm” time with the lid on. It will fix itself. It will never be as dry as regular rice.
- If you need to keep the cooked pork and bell pepper warm, return them to the pan they were cooked in, and keep it over very, very low (perhaps even residual) heat.
- Once the rice is done, you could remove and discard the ginger slice(s), but I don’t. I consider myself lucky to wind up with it in my serving.
Leftovers:
Refrigerate them, obviously. Nuke them gently, so as to warm the pork without cooking it.
If you buy a pork loin for this recipe, you’re going to have a lot leftover. Make a pork roast the next day.
Serving Sizes:
This might be more rice than you need, but that depends on how much rice you’d like to include per serving. The rice is utterly fabulous. It’s not just there to take up space. It’s got such a beautiful coconut flavor. I’ll admit that the coconut gets a bit overshadowed by some of the other flavors, but the beauty of serving it this way is that the flavors don’t really commingle except on the chopstick. With four servings, you’ll have some leftovers – but not so much that everyone can have seconds.
Thai Coconut Rice Bowl
Credit for images on this page: Make It Like a Man! This content was not solicited by anyone, nor was it written in exchange for anything. References: Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker, and Ethan Becker, “Thai Coconut Rice,” in The Joy of Cooking (New York: Scribner, 1997), 259. Thank you, Kesor. Thank you, ⌘+C. Make It Like a Man! is ranked by Feedspot as #2 in the Top 30 Men’s Cooking Blogs.
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