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These crazy-delicious Vietnamese Caramel Pork Lettuce Wraps make a fresh, light weeknight meal and are also perfect for a dinner party.
It would be a difficult decision, but if I was forced to choose my favorite international cuisine, Vietnamese would be right there at the top. These Vietnamese Caramel Pork Lettuce Wraps are the perfect example of everything I love about this far east fare; they're fresh, healthy, full of vibrant flavor and beautiful!
I've been tweaking these Vietnamese Caramel Pork Lettuce Wraps for several months now and they're finally ready for you. I tried this recipe in the instant pot but found that the stovetop method actually worked better and honestly, didn't take much longer. After 4 or 5 rounds, the flavor is just right: a combination of sweet and salty, with a bit of heat and tons of wonderful flavor.
The recipe I adapted them from calls for the meat to be cut larger and served in bowls with rice, which is also delicious, but my favorite way to serve this incredibly delicious pork is diced small, with lots of fresh veggies and Jasmine rice. Wrapped up in large tender leaves of butter (or bib) lettuce it makes a fabulous light dinner.
Does making Vietnamese Caramel Pork sound complicated? It's not! It's all done on the stove top with no searing mess. I'm funny about getting my stove top all messed up and love that this recipe is mess-free.
Hands off stovetop cooking
How does it work? Just combine brown sugar and water in a large pan. Heat until the sugar is melted and bubbly, just a few minutes. Then add the diced pork along with shallots, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, fish sauce, chili garlic sauce and coconut water. Bring the whole works to a boil then reduce to a simmer and let it do its own thing! It will take at least an hour for the pork to get nice and tender. The good news is that its hands-off time. That means you can be doing your own thing too!
It's fun to see the transformation in the final minutes of cooking as the pork goes from pale brown to a beautiful deep, Â mahogany hue as the meat does its magical caramelization.
What is coconut water?
Not to be confused with coconut milk, coconut water is the clear liquid found in the center of a green, young coconut. It has a crisp, clean, slightly sweet and slightly salty taste. Coconut water is rich in nutrients and lower in calories than coconut milk. It will leave your guests wondering "Hhhmmm…what's that wonderful flavor?"
Coconut water can be found in either the beverage section, the area where sports drinks are stocked or the international aisle. I often find it in the Latin/Mexican aisle.
What kind of veggies to serve in these Vietnamese Caramel Pork Lettuce Wraps?
The sky's really the limit! This time I used shaved red cabbage, shredded carrots and thinly sliced Persian cucumbers. Other ideas are spring onions, Nappa cabbage, bean sprouts, strips of bell pepper, daikon radish, avocado and pea pods A garnish of chopped, salted peanuts and thinly sliced spicy peppers add crunch and a little heat.
I also love to serve a bowl of sweet and spicy (just a bit of heat) peanut sauce with these lettuce wraps. It adds another fabulous flavor dimension and pairs so nicely with the crunchy veggies and tender meat. This delicious 5-Minute Easy Peanut Sauce is my favorite - and truly does take just 5 minutes!
Café Tips for making these Vietnamese Caramel Pork Lettuce Wraps
- This recipe calls for pork shoulder or pork butt. I like to buy boneless pork shoulder ribs rather than a whole pork shoulder or butt. The ribs are much easier to handle and often the butcher has already trimmed some of the fat. If you can't find them, check with your butcher.
- I like to wait till one of my local groceries has the shoulder ribs on sale and then stock up as they freeze well.
- Pork shoulder, butt and/or the boneless ribs I mentioned above are all fattier cuts of meat. Trim off the large portions of fat. It's important, however, to leave some fat as this will keep the meat nice and tender over the extended cooking time.
- The peanut sauce recipe will make more than you need for these Vietnamese Caramel Pork Lettuce Wraps but you'll find lots of other ways to use it. It's fabulous as a sauce for grilled chicken, pork or shrimp and makes a wonderful dipping sauce for veggies.
- Lettuce wraps can be a bit messy to eat. We've found doubling up two lettuce leaves makes a sturdier wrap and less of the delicious fillings fall out.
- Be sure to let the pork get nice and brown at the end but watch it carefully and stir frequently as you don't want it to burn.
- After cooking for one hour, the liquid should be reduced and the pork nice and tender. If the pork is not tender at this point, just add ÂĽ-1/2 cup water and cook a little longer.
- This Vietnamese Caramel Pork recipe calls for fish sauce. If you've never used fish sauce, don't let it scare you. It doesn't have a wonderful aroma, to put it mildly. But it adds wonderful authentic flavor and the finished product doesn't taste "fishy" in the slightest. Buy a good quality fish sauce. It will keep just about forever in the fridge. I really like the Red Boat brand.
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Vietnamese Caramel Pork Lettuce Wraps
Ingredients
For the caramel pork:
- ½ cup dark brown sugar tightly packed
- 1 tablespoon water
- 1 ½ cups coconut water
- 2 medium-size shallots halved lengthwise and sliced very thin
- 3 garlic cloves finely minced
- 2 tablespoons finely grated fresh ginger
- ÂĽ cup soy sauce
- 1 ½ tablespoons fish sauce
- 2-3 teaspoons chili garlic sauce
- 2 ½ pounds trimmed pork shoulder cut into ½-inch pieces
To serve:
- 2 cups finely sliced red cabbage
- 2-3 Persian cucumbers small seedless cucumbers, thinly sliced
- 2 cups shredded carrots
- Boston, bib or butter lettuce leaves
- chopped salted peanuts
- 5-minute Easy Peanut Sauce
Instructions
- For the Caramel Pork:
- Combine brown sugar and water in a large pot over medium-high heat. Stir until combined. Once mixture begins to bubble, continue cooking for 2-3 minutes, stirring frequently.
- Add remaining ingredients, stir and bring mixture to a boil. Reduce heat to maintain a steady, simmer. Simmer for 60-70 minutes uncovered, stirring every 15 minutes until the liquid has reduced and the pork is tender.
- Continue to cook at this point, stirring frequently until the pork reaches a deep caramel color and most of the liquid is gone and pork is glazed.
To serve:
- Serve with shredded carrots, thinly sliced red cabbage, thinly sliced cucumbers, Boston, bob or butter lettuce, chopped peanuts and peanut sauce.
Notes
Nutrition
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VN recipes are up there in my "love" foods. Would pork belly work for this? I see cuts that are not 'mostly' fat sometimes. Would it get too tough?? Thanks for your suggestions and help!
Hi Patty, I haven't tried making this with pork belly so I can't say for sure. If you give it a try let us know!
Ok, I'm printing the recipe. Anyone with ideas/suggestions on pork belly for this recipe i would appreciate your thoughts. Recipe is obviously yummy using pork shoulder from all the comments. Thanks Chris.
Made this in the IP and omitted the coconut water because I didn’t have any. Just mixed up the sauce, tossed it with the pork, and cooked it for seven minutes. It turned out perfectly. The peanut sauce was wonderful.
Awesome! Thanks for sharing your results, Sue!
I love this recipe and have made it several times. Can I make the meat ahead of time and freeze ? We are going on a lake vacation and I would love to serve this but want to make it ahead of time and then reheat.
Hi Tamara, yes, you could definitely do that!
This is delicious! I doubled the recipe and had a problem with too much liquid that didn't reduce enough. I cooked for about 90 minutes and finally poured off about 2 cups of liquid and finished it. Still didn't really get to a caramelized state and the pork became more like pulled pork. Didn't throw off our guests one bit, but I think it would have been even better with less liquid. I didn't see this comment from anybody else, so it must be that when you double the amount of meat, you don't double the liquid. I also cooked in a deep soup/stock pot and should have used more of a large skillet/saute pan to aid in the reduction. We had some kids in the mix and used some flour tortillas for them to aid in eating and that worked great as well.
Thanks so much, Larry, for sharing your results. Yes, you're right, if you reduce the liquid in a skillet, it will work much more quickly!
The caramelized pork is fabulous and stands on its own to make the entire dish. I tried dipping a piece of the pork in the peanut sauce and it covered up the delicious caramelization. So here is what I did. I put butter lettuce leaves in a soup bowl. Then tossed the veggies together in another bowl, added just enough peanut sauce to lightly coat. I put a scoop of that on top of the lettuce, then topped with the wonderful pork. Sprinkled sliced green onions on top. I make sure each bite had all the veggies, pork, and some lettuce. Heaven! A sprinkle of a good Shiracha sauce is nice too. Very time-consuming recipe but the pork is worth it. I think half the recipe of the peanut sauce is plenty unless you want a lot left over to do other things with as Chris suggested.
Thanks, Karen for sharing your detailed review!
"May I have that recipe you made for us, you know, the one with that to-die-for peanut sauce?", was her question after her family left, having spent the week skiing the mountain. That's my go to sign...if the dinner guests ask for the recipe I place it in my brain-file of "make this one again!"
My HunterMan husband keeps our freezers (yes, plural...as in FOUR!) full at all times with great, lean, organic protein, so for this meal I incorporated MOOSE into the recipe. A winner. I imagine elk would give just as good results too.
I love introducing your recipes to my friends!
*I may, or may not have, licked the leftover peanut sauce container clean the next morning, much like I shamefully do with Chick-Fil-A's special sauce container!
Haha! I love it! Thanks so much for sharing your results, Michelle! How fun to have a "hunter husband" to stock your freezers. I thought I had a lot with 2 refrigerator-freezers and an additional free-standing freezer! Wow!
I cooked the meat down for almost 2 hrs and it reduced complete until there was no liquid left but the meat never carmelized like yours-so dark brown and shiny. It got dry and almost pulled pork like so I finally just stopped. Suggestions?
It's difficult to say, Lauren, without having been right there in the kitchen with you. With the sugar and soy sauce, it should definitely have gotten caramelized and tender after 60-70 minutes.
i realize this is a pork recipe but I'm wondering if there's a way to do this with chicken...I think I might try it just for the heck of it. I know the chicken might dry out, and I'm *sure* the pork is bringing so much flavor to the dish, but I'm watching my points and that pork is a killer. I'll let you know how I do!
Hi Lucy, I think chicken breast would dry out too much but chicken thighs would work!
Chris,
I tried this with chicken breast and as you predicted, it absolutely dried the chicken out. But I'm wondering if you could either make the sauce by itself and add already cooked chicken OR could you somehow use the multi-cooker, where you make the sauce on saute and then add chicken (maybe in pieces?) and slow cook it for a while? The flavors were really excellent and with chicken, this is a really great tasting low points dinner, even with that caramel sauce. Your thoughts are appreciated--you're the pro!
I'm wondering if you would make the sauce on its own and then towards the very end, add some thin strips of velvetized chicken. You can read about velveting chicken here: https://thecafesucrefarine.com/30-minute-thai-peanut-chicken/
They will cook quickly so just add them near the end.
This sounds so so good Chris, thank you!
Vietnamese is definitely my favorite Asian food. Such a great mix of sweet, salty, sour and spicy. I made this for my family last night and everyone loved it. i added some puffed rice vermicelli, thanks for another great recipe.
Vietnamese food is my favorite ethnic food. I could eat it every day. Love this version of pork and can't wait to try it!
Yours is the second recommendation I've read for Red Boat fish sauce lately, Chris! Got to give it a try. These luscious lettuce wraps would be a perfect way to use it. They look delicious!
So delicious, I used 2 tsp of the Chile garlic sauce and then added more on each wrap to taste to prevent getting it TOO hot for some. Perfect. I offered bean sprouts, green onion, julienne cucumber, julienne carrots and the thinly sliced cabbage as well as chopped peanuts. We each were able to choose our favorites.
The peanut sauce is way easier than my go-to and just as delicious, it's a winner. 1/2 recipe was enough for this and we still have some left over. FYI - prep time is way more than 1 hr 10 minutes if you have to cut the meat into 1/2" pieces before starting the recipe.
Thaks Jane, so happy you enjoyed them. Sounds like a fun meal! And thanks for the heads-up regarding the prep time. You're right, I will change that.
I absolutely LOVE these Chris! That caramel pork sounds fantastic. Perfect for meal prepping for the week too!
Wow, I've made chicken lettuce wraps numerous times, but now I must make this fabulous Vietnamese pork version!! What a gorgeous presentation with all the fixings!!!
Holy moly these look amazing! I'm embarking on a sugar and carb cleanse so I'm on the hunt for new and enticing recipes. So glad I stumbled across your site. Pinning!
I think I have everything I need to make these lovely wraps. The pork looks super flavorful - great way to get this weekend started!
I’m a fan of your recipes... they’re do~able, but taste gourmet! Do you think I could use pork loin for this?
Hi Pal, thanks so much! I wouldn't try pork loin for this as I think it would dry out too much and the meat won't be as tender. There might be a way to do it by shortening the cooking time - but I would have to experiment with amounts of ingredients before I could say for sure.
The caramel colour looks so inviting and so delicious. Love the use of coconut water here.
I have never heard of such a thing, but it looks delicious!! Sweet and savory. You DO know how to find them! And so very easy!!
I adore Vietnamese cooking but I have to confess it does seem daunting sometimes, the flavors are so complex and unfamiliar, you make this seem totally doable, Chris, and it's gorgeous!
Looks delicious! I am loving DK brown sugar better than light these days..more caramel!
Looks delicious... but where is the recipe?
Hi Cassie, we are out of town and the recipe went out incomplete, it's fixed now! So sorry!
Love this dish in restaurants and am eager to try this one at home; but where are the instructions for cooking?
So, sorry Wendy, it's fixed now!
I love Vietnamese flavours, so I'm putting this one on the top of my menu list! And so pretty with all those colours together 🙂