Ingredients

(A) Shallot lard — 油蔥, makes enough for 8–10 bowls

   
100g shallots (紅蔥頭), sliced 3mm thick
150g rendered lard

(B) Per 2 bowls

   
400g hot cooked short-grain japonica rice (蓬萊米), from about 180g raw
30g shallot lard, from (A)
16g soy sauce, light
  fried shallot crisps, from (A)
1 scallion, thinly sliced

Steps

  1. Slice the shallots 3mm thick and keep them even — thin slices burn before thick ones crisp. Spread them out to dry at least 1 hour.

  2. Melt the lard in a small pot over low heat to 275°F. Add the shallots; they should bubble steadily, not violently.

  3. Fry about 8 minutes, stirring, until the shallots are pale gold — lighter than they look done. Pull them there. They keep darkening in their own residual heat and turn bitter at deep brown.

  4. Strain immediately. Drain the crisps on paper towel; keep the lard in a jar. The lard is now 油蔥.

  5. Cook the rice. It must be hot when it hits the lard, or the lard will not melt.

  6. Per bowl, stir 15g shallot lard and 8g soy sauce into 200g hot rice until every grain is glossy. Top with the crisps and scallion. Serve immediately.

Notes

  • Zhu You Fan (豬油拌飯). The whole dish is hot rice, lard and soy, plus the fried shallots that nearly every version adds.
  • No egg. A fried egg (荷包蛋) is a modern pairing, not part of this dish; the add-on stalls actually serve is a braised egg (滷蛋). Also not this dish: 肉燥, the minced pork braise — adding that makes it 滷肉飯.
  • How much lard is genuinely unsettled. icook says one spoonful, about 15g a bowl; a cookpad version says 3 tablespoons, about 40g. That is a 3x spread, not a typo. 15g is the start; go up for a richer bowl.
  • The soy quantity is not sourced. Every Taiwanese source says 少許 or 適量, never a number. 8g a bowl is a starting point, not a tradition.
  • Which soy is contested. Wikipedia specifies plain light soy (頭抽); the icook and cookpad versions use 醬油膏, the thickened sweeter paste; one blends the two 1:1. Plain soy is used here because the definitional source names it.
  • Japonica rice, not jasmine. Taiwan’s table rice is short-grain 蓬萊米 and its stickiness is what carries the lard; Thai jasmine is a different grain and is not used. Cook it in roughly its own weight of water — the conventional ratio, not one sourced here.
  • The shallot temperature and time are borrowed. No Taiwanese source found gives a number for frying 紅蔥頭 in lard; they all say 低溫慢火 — low heat, slow. The 275°F and 8 minutes come from a non-lard shallot recipe and are a starting point. The colour cue is the sourced part, and it is the one that matters.
  • To render your own lard: leaf lard (板油) is what the dedicated Taiwanese recipes use, though one source argues back fat (肥膘肉) renders clearer. Cut it small and render dry at 225–250°F for several hours; stop when the cracklings are golden, shrunken and floating and the fat runs clear. Expect about 90% of the raw fat’s weight back. Commercial lard may be hydrogenated, which is why Taiwanese sources prefer homemade.
  • Storage is disputed. For plain lard a Taiwanese source gives ~2 weeks at room temperature and a month refrigerated, against an English source’s 6+ months. The crisps fade fastest — a week refrigerated by one account, a day at room temperature by another. Fry them near when you will eat them.
  • The shallot batch makes 油蔥 for 8–10 bowls, but assembly is per bowl and does not scale into one pot: the rice has to be hot at the moment the lard goes in.