Pork Stew Without Roux or Demi-Glace: How to Make Up for Pork's Weak Aroma

It started with a thick cut of pork Ryuji found at a nearby shop. It was sold as pork shoulder loin for steaks, but according to Ryuji, it wasn't the thickness of a normal steak cut; it looked more like it had been sliced off a block. Making pork steak with something like that would be tricky to cook. So Ryuji considered other dishes and realized a pork stew hadn't been made yet. This isn't a white stew, but the same brown type as beef stew.

Ryuji usually makes beef stew around Christmas each year, but pork for Christmas felt a little off, so Ryuji decided to make it at this time of year instead. The quantities are 500g of meat for 3 to 4 servings. If you can't find similar meat, a pork loin block will do, and Ryuji particularly recommends shoulder loin, which has sinew running through the center and is delicious. Thicker is better, and a block is better still.

The vegetables are carrot, potato, and onion, which Ryuji admits are "the same as curry ingredients." Garlic, if you have it, makes things quite a bit better, and one type of mushroom wouldn't hurt either. The staff member seemed unconvinced about mushrooms in stew, but was persuaded when Ryuji said, "You put mushrooms in, don't you?" It's a down-to-earth dish, so the idea is to make it with whatever you have on hand.

The carrot is cut into rough chunks, about 120g. One carrot is around 200g, so not all of it is used. Ryuji says it's worth adding because it makes the dish look nice. The onion is also cut into rough chunks as a filling ingredient, 240g, which is nearly one whole onion. This time it was on the small side, so a little more was added. A new-season onion is fine too. Ryuji says that when eating beef stew at home, it's nice to include vegetables. That way the stew alone makes a complete meal, which makes things easier for the cook.

For the potato, Ryuji uses one new potato, which was in season at the time, weighing a little over 200g. New potatoes have skins so thin that they come off just by scrubbing with a steel scouring pad, so the potato goes in unpeeled. The reasons: the area around the skin is tasty, and peeling reduces the edible portion. When the staff member said, "They're great as French fries, aren't they?", Ryuji replied that new potatoes are high in moisture and not suited to frying, so Ryuji doesn't do that much (the staff member admitted it was just an assumption). According to Ryuji, new potatoes really shine in simmered dishes; they're the best in curry, and good for mashed potatoes too.

The garlic is crushed, peeled, and browned to bring out its aroma. As Ryuji explains, with beef, simply searing the fat produces a toasty smell, but pork doesn't really give that off. So with pork stew, it becomes important to compensate for aroma with spices and the like.

This led to talk about regional differences in pork. According to Ryuji, some people say pork stew feels "cheap," and those people are mostly from Kansai. In Kansai, pork isn't eaten as much, and apparently making something with pork can get it called cheap. The staff member, on the other hand, said the stew at home growing up was made with pork, and Ryuji responded that Kanto is a pork culture. Western-style cooking was apparently quite popular in Kanto, and people ate pork as a matter of course.

Ryuji personally doesn't think pork is inferior to beef in terms of its strength as a meat. Ryuji says the feeling that beef is the most delicious doesn't really make sense to them, and that if they could only eat one meat for the rest of their life, they might not choose beef—it would be pork or chicken. That's because beef doesn't have that wide a repertoire of dishes. Pork can substitute for beef, as in pork stew, but making a brown stew with chicken is a bit different. So if choosing just one, it might be pork—that was the conclusion. Ryuji also invited viewers to share in the comments which they would choose.

The conversation turned to buying meat as well. When the staff member said it's nice to have Niku no Hanamasa or Gyomu Super nearby, Ryuji replied that having a Hanamasa nearby makes you "a winner in life." They have every kind of meat, lots of cuts, and it's cheap enough to eat a different meat every day, so much so that you'd stop eating out. Ryuji added that if you're deciding where to live, they'd recommend being near a Hanamasa or Gyomu Super. Asked about quality, Ryuji answered that unlike fish, meat doesn't show much difference in freshness, and even if it's lost a bit of freshness, the right cooking method makes it delicious.

The meat is cut into large pieces. For stew, bigger chunks are better, Ryuji says, since cutting it small seems likely to make it tough. Things like cutting the sinew or using a meat tenderizer are unnecessary because it'll be simmered.

It's lightly seasoned with salt and pepper and dusted with cake flour. The flour browning makes the stew's color a little deeper. The flour was dusted on right where the meat was cut. That's because getting out a tray is a hassle, and while a restaurant would do it properly, Ryuji says extra effort is an unnecessary element in home cooking. Effort isn't appreciated in home cooking; if your partner is a foodie they might notice, but nobody's going to say, "You went to all this trouble for me"—so a recipe with fewer dishes to wash is a better recipe. That's the argument. Ryuji added that anyone who cares can use a tray, but Ryuji doesn't want to.

During filming, regarding the staff member shooting a short video at the same time, when the staff member started to bring up differences between male and female brains, Ryuji replied that they don't much like the idea of deciding what people are suited for based on gender. Ryuji grew up in an era when cooking was considered women's work and was told that men don't cook at home and don't need to set foot in the kitchen, but Ryuji does it because they enjoy it.

Add a suitable amount of oil to a frying pan and sear the surface of the meat. Ryuji explains that the goal isn't so much "sealing" the meat as creating a browned crust through the Maillard reaction. It doesn't need to be cooked through; a crisp browned surface is enough.

Three reasons were given for dusting with flour. The browned flour creates a toasty aroma; its color becomes the stew's color, making it look appetizing; and in the end it dissolves and acts as a roux. You can make it without flour, but Ryuji takes this approach because lightly browning it brings out the color. Ryuji also mentioned not usually dusting with flour in other recipes.

Here, too, the point about pork's weak aroma came up again. Beef fat gives off a toasty aroma when seared, but pork doesn't unless it's seared quite a lot. Pork beats beef on umami but can't beat it on aroma, so adding aroma is extremely important. Ryuji framed this as a dish "specialized in aroma."

Once browned, the meat is taken out for the time being. As for where to put it, Ryuji said somewhere already dirty is fine, since it'll be washed later anyway.

With the meat out, the garlic is browned in the now-empty pan.

The reason for removing the meat is that it's coated in flour. Ryuji says, "This pork is the roux." Red wine goes in next, and if the meat were still in the pan, the liquid would thicken the moment it was added, and you'd end up reducing a gloopy mess. That's what Ryuji wants to avoid.

Once the garlic starts to brown, all the vegetables go in and are sautéed. There are quite a lot of vegetables. The mushrooms don't go in at this point, since adding them from the start would mean simmering them for a long time. According to Ryuji, the mushrooms honestly aren't essential, but a few add umami, so if you have them, it's better to put them in.

Add 250cc of red wine to the vegetables. If you want to make something like a demi-glace sauce, Ryuji says, it's better to use red wine. When the staff member said, "This is going to be authentic," Ryuji replied that they don't much like the word "authentic"—being authentic doesn't make something tasty; tasting good is everything. The reason for the red wine is that it adds astringency and richness.

You can make it without red wine, in which case it becomes a brown sauce. As Ryuji explains, brown sauce is the brown sauce that old-fashioned Western-style restaurants (yoshoku-ya) used, and it's sometimes made with just Worcestershire sauce and ketchup. That makes it a bit cheap-tasting, though, so this time 250cc of red wine went in. It's positioned as old-school yoshoku-ya style; hotels and the like sometimes make the sauce from meat alone. The wine can be quite cheap, but it should be well colored, since some are like thin grape juice.

Here, while reducing over high heat, add 3½ tablespoons of ketchup and 1½ tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce. This is how you get a beef-stew-like result without demi-glace sauce. The reason for reducing is that red wine's acidity and astringency are strong, and this cooks them off. Reducing the seasonings along with it cooks off the acidity of the ketchup and Worcestershire sauce at the same time. Using a can of demi-glace sauce would add richness, but Ryuji emphasized that ketchup and Worcestershire sauce alone make it plenty delicious. The staff member said cans of demi-glace are expensive, and Ryuji agreed that if wine can substitute, that's fine.

Ryuji has always disliked sourness and says sour beef stew doesn't taste good. To make a rich stew, Ryuji asks you to be patient here and cook off the acidity. As it reduces, the sourness turns into sweetness, and the vegetables absorb the flavor. It thickens a little, too. Ryuji explained the thickness as coming from components of the ketchup and Worcestershire sauce, plus a bit of the potato dissolving. The guideline is when a line drawn with a wooden spatula across the bottom of the pan stays for a while; Ryuji reduced it to probably about a third. Flavor matters too, of course, but to get a dark, deep roux, Ryuji prioritizes richness and reduces it this far.

Add 400cc of water. The staff member was surprised at how little it was. Return the meat and add oyster mushrooms (hiratake). According to Ryuji, from here it's a simple dish that's done just by simmering.

Mushrooms add a fun texture and give it a homestyle finish. Mushrooms other than oyster mushrooms are fine, and button mushrooms can also go in at this point. Many people sauté button mushrooms first, which is also tasty, but Ryuji says there's no problem adding them as is. The whole cluster of oyster mushrooms is used, since there's no point keeping the rest.

Ryuji wanted the meat on the tender side, so the plan was to simmer for one hour. The heat is medium-low, with the lid on. Before the lid goes on it isn't bubbling much, but with the lid on, heat builds up and it comes to a boil. If you turn up the heat based on how it looks now, it'll be boiling furiously when you open it later, so medium-low is fine—that was the explanation.

Checking after 10 minutes, Ryuji realized the consommé had been forgotten and added 1 tablespoon at this point. Consommé is the source of umami. The plan was then to continue simmering for about 50 more minutes.

In reality, the meat became more tender than expected about 40 minutes after simmering began. Ryuji says pork gets tender more easily than beef. Lifting the lid, the color was good and it had some thickness, but it was still a bit thin. Time won't fix that, so this is where the finishing begins.

First, turn the heat up a little. The original plan was to simmer for an hour, so cooking off a bit of the liquid gets it to just the right consistency. The flavor was a little lacking, so 2 pinches of salt were added. Since there's consommé in it, salt alone is enough, Ryuji says.

Next comes butter. Stews usually get fat added for richness, but none had gone in so far. The key is adding the butter at the end; something heavier is nice too, but for a normal level, 20g is enough. Melt the butter in the microwave and mix in about half a tablespoon of cake flour. For the "slightly thin" state from earlier, this much is sufficient. This is beurre manié: dissolving flour into butter before adding it prevents lumps. Once stirred in, it thickens right away, and the butter's richness comes in at the same time. Ryuji said, "It's already got that stew richness," and the staff member responded, "It really does."

After tasting, Ryuji wanted a bit more umami and added another 1 teaspoon of consommé. Combined with the initial 1 tablespoon, that makes 4 teaspoons in total. Ryuji's older recipe used 30g of butter, but Ryuji thinks that if there's enough umami, 20g is plenty delicious.

Finally, pepper, and 4 shakes of garlic powder for vibrancy. It's a finish in line with the guiding principle from the start: aroma is what matters in pork stew.

Then about 1 teaspoon of sugar is added. Richness is basically added with sugar; you can put it in at the start, but it tastes better worked into the roux afterward. If you feel richness is lacking, adding sugar will usually fix it, and Ryuji recommends learning how to use small amounts of sugar. When the staff member confirmed, "So it's for richness, not sweetness," Ryuji said it's not about sweetness. Any more would bring the sweetness to the forefront, so it was declared done here.

Even after all that simmering, the potatoes hadn't fallen apart. When the staff member asked whether simmering for more than an hour would be risky, Ryuji answered that it's totally fine—they won't break down as long as you don't keep stirring or fiddling with them.

The reason, Ryuji says, is the thickness of the liquid. Nikujaga is simmered in thin, watery liquid, so the potatoes break down easily. In a thickened liquid, they don't. They break down when they take impact from outside; curry potatoes shouldn't break down either, by rights, but they're falling apart on day two because people stir it—that's Ryuji's explanation.

Once plated, big chunks of meat and potato were tumbling around, and the staff member remarked that it was "pretty lavish for something made without them." To finish, sprinkle dried parsley if you have it. You could drizzle on fresh cream, but Ryuji doesn't because it's expensive. When the staff member asked whether coffee creamer would work, Ryuji said that's the most economical option.

At the tasting, the staff member tried the meat first and was surprised it was far more tender than expected. "I thought it'd be a little tougher," "It's falling apart," the staff member said, adding that beef wouldn't get like this in this amount of time. Ryuji broke the meat apart with just a spoon, showing that it gets this tender even in under an hour. The staff member also said it had none of the stringiness common with beef. Ryuji added that shoulder loin gets about this tender, and pork belly would turn out similar but might need to simmer a little longer.

The vegetables were well received, too. The new potato, the sweet carrot, and the oyster mushrooms all suited the stew. The staff member said either oyster mushrooms or button mushrooms would be fine. About the new potato, Ryuji said it's fluffy and high in moisture, so it's juicy and not dry. Differences in potato flavor can be surprisingly hard to tell, but they're obvious in curry. The potatoes were simmered unpeeled, yet the skin wasn't noticeable at all—if anything, the two agreed, the skin was tasty.

As for flavor, Ryuji's assessment was that despite using neither demi-glace sauce nor roux, nothing tasted off, and it had the flavor of a carefully made pork stew. Ryuji said it goes with toasted baguette as well as rice, and the staff member said they're on team rice. On the other hand, Ryuji noted the salt is a bit strong, so the final 2 pinches of salt should be adjusted to taste. If pairing it with drinks or rice, this salt level will definitely work.

The butter was reduced from the original recipe, so it isn't heavy and is easy to eat. Ryuji's assessment is that it's a level of richness the whole family can enjoy. The quantity was planned for 3 to 4 servings, but at this pace it might be more like 3, and Ryuji said it would likely disappear fast if people go back for seconds.

While tasting, Ryuji explained where this dish stands. This kind of roux made without demi-glace sauce is, roughly speaking, called a "brown roux," and this time red wine was used as well. Brown roux is originally a sauce poured over things like pork sauté. It's also used for beef stew, but many restaurants make beef stew with stock simmered from bones and reduce it thoroughly, so the color becomes much closer to jet black. This stew leans heavily homestyle but is frighteningly delicious—that's Ryuji's assessment.

This recipe is an improved version of a beef stew recipe Ryuji made previously. The original recipe called for simmering for an hour and a half, but because the loin got tender quickly, it took about half that, and the whole thing takes roughly 50 minutes to an hour. On top of that, Ryuji called it "a really great recipe" that might even surpass beef.

Finally, Ryuji talked about new potato season. By the time this video is published, new potatoes should still be available, probably until around March. They disappear if you wait too long, so if you're making curry or stew, especially use new potatoes and, if possible, simmer them without peeling—that was Ryuji's closing message. The staff member, who had been half-skeptical along the way, replied, "That was amazing," and the tasting came to an end.