Crispy Pork Belly Recipe

Bored of lean cuts or just looking for the best pork can offer? Roast crispy pork belly in the oven that will bless every moment!

Pork bellies are like chicken wings. Someone loves them while others hate them. There is no middle-way here. Afterall who would bear a friend who munches on our favorite thing just to keep us a company destroying the foundations of who we are bite after bite.

As the saying goes, we are what we eat and if we look beyond the spiritual meaning of things and place the topic of reincarnation onto another, to allow us a closer look to plain old boring biology then we must face the facts.

We eat up things and those once living creature cells will be used to fuel our body, our every movements including our thoughts. The nutrients that were picked up from Mother Earth by a somber spinach during the spring is transferred into our body and distributed all around our cells making us Popeye one bite at the time.

The bad thing is, according to recent news, that we do not only gulp down the nutrients we need but the crap we make too. Well, not the dump that comes out of our body that could be recycled by the millions of years old tiny microorganisms or the couple of years old highly sophisticated water cleaning plants.

We are talking about plastic pollution that is in our food cycle thanks to the really great minds who were dumping plastic into the oceans and actually everywhere it was possible. Now we have it in our food and water as well as it can’t be removed with any of our current technology.

Luckily, we can’t notice it, otherwise most of the culinary achievements of past centuries would be spoilt. Generations would fall into agonizing desperation every spring if the barbecues were smelling like burning tyres next to a post-apocalyptic highway.

Probably that would be a quicker call to action than any polar bear sitting on wandering piece of ice in the middle of the ocean. Afterall, besides polar bears being cute from a certain distance few of us could relate to them.

If someone said that pork belly is in danger because of irresponsible treatment of Earth resources, no-one would dare to joke around environmental issues. Who would risk their morning rashers of bacon, right?

Although, bacon is prepared from several different cuts of meat, like in Britain from the back, it is most commonly made by salt-curing the pork belly. This is where most of the fat can be found and all the flavors resides.

Spanish take great pride in feeding their pigs with acorn for months before slaughtering them which gives them a distinctive exclusive flavor and hefty price tag for the Jamon Iberico de Bellota.
But we aren’t going to cure the pork belly for years as they do with their Serrano ham but throw it immediately on the frying pan and sear it a little bit on some spices, vegetables and maybe on some white wine.

This quick searing is not mandatory but it helps the dish to develop distinctive flavors compared to just throwing everything into a baking sheet and toss the whole thing into the oven.

Roasting or rather braising the pork belly takes very little effort and yields great rewards after a couple of hours or at least 90 minutes in the oven. However, it’s not essential, a splash of juicy grease on the skin every now and then will go a long way keeping the skin turning black if we plan to keep the meat in, for longer than an hour.

Ingredients

• 2lb / 1kg Pork belly
• 2 tablespoon Salt for rubbing
• ½ cup / 150ml Oil
• 1 Onion (diced)
• 1 Carrot (diced)
• 2 Celery stalk (diced)
• 1 teaspoon Salt
• 1 clove Garlic (crushed)
• 1 teaspoon Black pepper
• 1 Bay leaf
• 1 cup White vine (optional)
• 1 cup Water

 

Kitchen utensils

• High walled baking pan of the size of pork belly

How to make Crispy pork belly

1. 1. Make diamond shaped cuts on the skin of the pork belly. Preferably the depth of the fat, without cutting the meat under the fat.
   2. Rub the cuts with the salt and any optional spices.
   3. Heat oil in a pan then add the diced onion, carrot, celery and salt essentially making mirepoix.
   4. Saute until the onion gets a glassy / translucent look for about 5 minutes on high heat.
   5. Add crushed garlic and bay leaf and saute until the garlic gets fragrant.
   6. Make some space on the pan for the pork belly and place it skin side down on the pan.
   7. Sear it for a 2-3 minutes then turn it around and sear the top too.
   8. Add the optional white wine and move the pork belly a bit around.
   9. Cook away the white wine to the quarter on high heat in about 10 – 15 minutes.
   10. Fill up the pan with water until the pork belly is submerged until the skin. Bring it to boil then transfer onto a baking pan or in case if a baking pan was used to prepare the dish just put the boiling pan into a 350°F / 180°C oven.
   11. Braise it for 90 – 180 minutes in the 350°F / 180°C preheated oven.
   12. For total perfection spoon juice onto the skin in every 20 minutes or so.

Enjoy!

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