Soy Sauce Pork (Tau Yew Bak)

Here’s a dish that I grew up with. Of course back then, my mum often made it with pork belly or pork leg, which I’m not a big fan of because of all the fats. When I make this dish now, I use pork chops instead. To get the meat cooked until it is fall-apart tender, with almost no supervision, I use my trusty slow-cooker. Just add the ingredients in the pot, turn it on, and leave it. Don’t you just love that? :D And at the end of the day, you will be rewarded with an awesome and delicious home-cooked meal. Although I would consider this dish to be similar to a stew, the resulting gravy/sauce is actually thin and soupy, not thick like an American stew. We do eat the gravy along with the meat (we ladle it all over the pork, eggs, and rice) – YUM!

4½ to 5 pounds thick-cut pork chops
1 head garlic, peeled (cloves can be kept whole or minced)
¼ cup tomato paste
⅓ cup sugar
4 cups low-sodium chicken broth (I use one 32-ounce package of Swanson Natural Goodness chicken broth)
¾ cup mushroom soy sauce (I use the Pearl River Bridge brand which can be found easily at any Asian grocery store)
8 to 12 extra-large eggs

Place all the ingredients (except the eggs) in the slow cooker, cover and cook until pork is tender, 9 to 11 hours on low or 5 to 7 hours on high. In the meantime, prepare the hard-boiled eggs, peel them, and set them aside (if you prepare the eggs way in advance, remember to refrigerate them until they are needed) . Once the pork is done (fall-apart tender), turn your slow-cooker to the warm setting and stir the peeled eggs into the gravy with the meat and let steep for at least 30 minutes. Skim off any excess fat on top of the stew. Serve hot or warm with rice. Enjoy!

Note: You can store the extra gravy in the freezer for future use, whether to make more soy sauce eggs, or soy sauce tofu (where you soak fried tofu in the soy sauce gravy).