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Rafutee
Rafute — pork belly simmered slow in sugar, soy sauce, and awamori
Skin-on pork belly is simmered low and slow in sugar, soy sauce, and awamori until it yields at a touch. Once a heavily seasoned preserved food suited to Okinawa's heat, the flavor has grown milder over time into a dish reserved for memorial services and formal guest meals.
- Origin: Okinawa
- About 1560 km southwest of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
Skin-on pork belly is simmered slowly in sugar, soy sauce, and awamori for this braised dish, also called rafutii. The long cooking time turns the skin meltingly soft, and a faint trace of awamori's aroma lingers to lift the rich flavor of the fat. The seasoning was originally strong, meant to help the dish keep in the warm climate, but it is said to have mellowed over time into the version now served as a centerpiece of formal and memorial-service meals.
How it's made
The pork belly's skin is seared over an open flame, then blanched and parboiled for about ninety minutes with careful skimming, and left to cool in its own liquid. Cut into chunks, it simmers over low heat in bonito stock and awamori, with sugar and soy sauce added gradually in stages over several hours until the skin turns soft enough to cut with chopsticks. Searing the skin first is said to drive off excess fat and any gamy smell.
Why it took this shape
Ryukyu cuisine is said to "begin and end with pork," a food culture known for using the animal without waste, down to the organs, the face, the ears, and even the blood. Pork cookery is said to have developed through the Ryukyu court's exchanges with China, and because mainland Japan's taboo on eating meat never took root here, pork has remained part of the food served even at memorial services.
Before you go
- How to shop at a supermarketHow to choose prepared foods, sashimi, and packaged sushi, when discount stickers tend to appear, region-only specialties, buying by weight, the checkout and bagging flow, and sampling etiquette at a local supermarket.
- Food for Obon and the harvest moon (tsukimi)A guide to the meat-free shojin ryori and somen served at Obon, and the tsukimi dango offered on the night of the harvest moon.
- What to know if you have dietary restrictionsHow allergen labeling works, where fish-based dashi, pork, and alcohol turn up, and phrases for checking with staff.
Dishes in the same style
- Agonoko UmaniThe roe of egg-bearing flying fish, caught only in early summer, is simmered in stock and soy sauce as an Oki bar snack. Its large grains and dense, sticky texture are prized as a delicacy said to be scarcer even than the fish's flesh.
- Funa MisoCrucian carp is simmered slowly with soybeans for around five hours, then finished in a sauce of red miso and coarse sugar. A freshwater fish dish of the Kiso rivers' lower basin, made with fatty winter carp simmered until the bones soften through.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Okinawa
- AwamoriA distilled spirit from Okinawa made only from Thai rice and black koji, with every grain of rice turned into koji in a method called zen-koji-jikomi. Citric acid from the black koji is said to keep the mash from spoiling even in hot, humid conditions, and it's classified alongside shochu as a single-distillation spirit.
- Chii IrichiiPork blood is worked with pork meat, carrot, and wood-ear mushroom into a distinctive stir-simmered dish. Rooted in the same eat-what-ails-you logic as ashi tibichi, it was thought to guard against anemia, and it's traditionally offered before Lunar New Year and at memorial services.
- Chimu ShinjiPork liver and a native yellow carrot are simmered down almost like a medicinal decoction, meant for days the body needs support. It follows the kusuimun idea that food itself can be medicine, and is traditionally made for anemia or when someone's caught a cold.
- Gooyaa ChanpuruuBitter goya is stir-fried together with Okinawa's firm tofu and egg. A dish only earns the name champuru once tofu is in it, and this one has long served double duty — coaxing back a summer-flagged appetite while delivering vitamin C, now eaten year-round.
- HanazakeA distilled spirit made only on Yonaguni, Japan's westernmost island, at around 60 percent alcohol. Its raw materials and method are the same as awamori, but because its proof exceeds awamori's legal ceiling, it's classified as 'spirits' rather than awamori under the liquor tax law.