Bak Kut Teh, a Malaysian favourite

View Photos (1)

Bak Kut Teh, a favourite among the Chinese in Malaysia and Singapore, is a pork dish made up of all parts of the pig. While "bak kut" means meat & bones, the dish has evolved so much that it would be incomplete without the extra ingredients.

While first commercialized in Klang whichis in Malaysia, Bak Kut Teh was apparently invented by a gentleman from Quanzhou of the Fujian province in China. The recipe was passed to a friend who later emigrated to Malaysia and became the first person to commercialise the dish. That's why Klang is generally known as the home of Bak Kut Teh.

Bak Kut Teh, or BKT, comes in quite a number of variations, some even come with chicken rather than pork. Let's look at the four major variations:
a. stew like style
b. soupy - but on the sweet side with less taste of herbs
c. soupy - savoury with less taste of herbs
d. soupy - savoury with strong taste of herbs

I will say my personal preference is for flavour D, savoury with a strong taste of herbs.

So what are the other criterias that then make good BKT.

Ingredients must be good to begin with. You can't make a soup that tastes good if much of what is put inside is low grade herbs, corn flour or MSG. Some BKT sellers only use premium materials. The good BKT soups don't have much or any MSG inside. Instead of MSG, the seller would use rock sugar or in some places they use sugar cane. My preference is for rock sugar, as sugar cane tends to make the soup too sweet for my liking. And as I grow older, I am becoming intolerant to MSG - it leaves me with cracked lips - not a good side effect at all - one of the reasons why I can't take my favourite Maggi noodle anymore.

BKT can only be served in claypot. If you are served in anything else, forget it. This is because BKT only tastes good if it's hot. Once it gets cold, it just doesn't taste good anymore. The claypot helps retain the heat of the soup. Some claypots are really bad at retaining the heat, so note that. BKT is therefore best eaten on a cool or cold day.

Personally while some may say that there is no difference between eating from a large claypot for a serving of four or a small claypot for one, I think the physics of it dictates that the pot with the larger surface area is going to cool down faster. So if you want to be fussy about it, you should each order individual claypots.

To me the meat that they give you for BKT needs to have appropriate amounts of fat in it. BKT isn't BKT if all the meat that you get is lean. I know in this day and age of healthy living, this is not too well accepted but I am a purist.

I love BKT with yam rice. Yam rice is rice cooked with yam and it tends to give the dish an extra flavour which you won't get with white rice.

"Yew Char Kuey" or "Yau Char Kwai" is essential to eating BKT. If the place says they don't have it, fuhgetaboutit. These guys don't know the product they are selling. There's an art in dipping the Yew Char Kuey in the soup as well. You can't dip it for too short a time, as it won't soak in the soup. You can't dip it too long till it becomes all soggy. It needs to just have enough soup in it, that as you bite into it, you can feel the soup coming out of it and still retain some firmness, that it still feels somewhat solid or crisp to the bite.

Other ingredients that make up the dish would be mushrooms (i like button mushrooms though shitake is not bad), "tow foo pok" and "foo chok" or fried bean curd strips which is really not that essential.

Make sure you try the "spare parts" like pig's stomach & intestines as well. BKT isn't quite the same without it.

Generous portions of soup is always good. If the BKT seller is going to be stingy about it, then give that place a miss.

Chilli is needed to complement the dish, Hey, I already told you about Penangites are born with extra stomach wall lining to withstand spicy food.

* * * * *

Published on 11/26/04