I have been seeing recipes for this everywhere lately and decided I wanted to give it a go. I looked at several that sounded good and found this one that I modified slightly to suit our tastes. http://kirbiecravings.com/2014/08/crispy-golden-pork-belly.html
So here is how you make a really nice pork belly, which is probably best cut into small pieces and served as an appetizer, but we had it last night for dinner with green salad and mashed potatoes.
This recipe does take a bit of pre-planning, but it's really worth the little bit of extra prep when you taste how well it turns out.
Step one - is to marinate the pork, covered in the fridge, but not let the marinade touch the skin. I used a slight variation of the original recipe (Kirby Cravings). My marinade was soy sauce, garlic, Thai sweet chili sauce, ginger, and a bit of Chinese cooking wine.
Pre-heat the oven to about 180 C.
Step two - is to remove the pork from the marinade, score the skin and rub it down with Extra Virgin Olive Oil.
Step three - is to completely cover the entire skin with a thick coating of salt (mine took just under a cup of salt). This creates a thick crust that soaks up a good portion of the excess fat and water to dry out the skin to improve the quality of the crackling.
Step four - is to put the pork onto a rack in a shallow roasting dish, adding about an inch of water but not allowing the water to touch the pork.
Step five - put the dish into the oven for about an hour. (Kirby's recipe states 40 minutes, but I left mine a bit longer)
Step six - remove the pork from the oven just long enough to remove the salt crust and put the dish back into the oven...bumping up the heat to about 250 C....for about another 45 minutes or, until crispy & golden (again, Kirby's recipe indicated about another 30 minutes, but mine took quite a bit longer to get crispy).
It turned out brilliantly and the meat was moist & tender with crispy and slightly salty crackling. I think that cut into bite-sized pieces, maybe stacked on a toothpick with a bit of crispy potato or something slightly acidic to cut the fat of the pork, would make a nice appetizer...if you have the patience for that sort of thing.
That's about all for now. Happy cooking!
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