Month: August 2021

And now for the details…

Hello dear friends. I am so very excited to share this recipe with you.

If you have ever been overwhelmed or scared about trying pork belly because it seems too hard or too much, fret not! This recipe is actually very easy. The hardest part? Waiting. Like… a long time. If you thought it was a mistake in the recipe, nope! You read the recipe right. This recipe takes SIX HOURS to cook. BUT the good news about it? The vast majority of that time, you can ignore it altogether. In fact, if you are like me, you may have to set an alarm so you do not forget that it is in the oven! This is very much a “set it and forget it” type recipe. This is a great recipe for when you are going to be home most of the day, but are not going to have time to cook. For me right now in particular, it works well, since we are still working from home in our part of the world, so I throw this in the oven around lunch time and ignore it the rest of the day and BAM. By the end of the day, dinner is pretty much ready to go.

When it comes to the ingredients for this recipe, pretty much everything should be available at your local grocers nowadays. Pork belly was not something that I found was typically carried at our local grocery stores up until the last several years. Well, unless you counted the smoked, salted and sliced pork belly that is American bacon. But more recently, I have noticed the injection of pork belly at a lot of grocers’ meat departments, making it much easier to find. If your local grocery store does not carry pork belly, you might need to find a local butchers. For this recipe you want a whole piece of pork belly, not one that has been sliced or cut into pieces. Pork belly is sold with or without the skin. I have made this recipe with both, and it was worked out great with either, so feel free to use whichever cut you find. We will have a slight change to how we prep it, but more on that in a little bit.

To get this recipe started, let’s preheat the oven to 200ºF/95ºC.

If that feels like a really low temperature, it sure is. We are going for low and slow here to render the fat in the cut, let it seep into every crevice of the meat and result in a succulent, juicy bite when done. If you are worried that 200ºF seems like it would be too low to allow the meat to cook adequately and result in undercooked pork, fret not. The temperature considered “safe” (read: well done) by the Government of Canada is 160ºF. And after spending multiple HOURS in the oven at 200ºF, your pork belly will be cooked all the way through and will most definitely be fully cooked. “But Emily,” you say, “I thought it was okay to eat pork at less than well done??” From what I have read and hear, yes, it is a-okay to eat your pork chop at medium. A lot of the food risk we used to see in the past that required pork to be fully cooked have been minimized through farming and butchering practices. I… still don’t feel fully comfortable with it, if I am being honest, and have the “pork can’t be pink” ingrained in my brain, and still cook all my pork to well done. But, regardless of your acceptable tolerances for pork done-ness, in this particular recipe, we are cooking for the full amount of time to help break down any connective tissue, fully render that fat, and end up with a delectable, tender piece of meat with a very slight chew.

Next step, prepping that belly to be cooked. To start, cut both a piece of parchment paper and a piece of aluminum foil, each big enough to wrap around the belly, and stack parchment on foil. Pat the belly dry of any excess moisture, and place it on top of the parchment, with the foil underneath. The only difference in how we treat skin vs no skin pork belly is right here. If you have a belly with skin, score the skin in a criss-cross pattern, forming little diamonds in the skin. We want to cut through the skin, and can cut a bit into the fat, but want to stop short of cutting too deep that we hit the meat. If you have a belly with no skin, congrats! No additional work required.

Next we season the meat. I estimated about one teaspoon each here of the salt, garlic powder, ginger powder and five-spice powder, but if you use more or less, it is no big deal. Basically, we are sprinkling all four powders onto all sides of the meat, patting them into the pork belly, before turning and getting the next side. Once the pork belly has been seasoned, wrap it in the parchment paper, and the wrap that in the aluminum foil. Before you wrap it, make sure you know which side is the fatty/skin side, because we are going to put the entire package into an oven proof dish with the fatty/skin side facing up, and put that into the oven. And then leave it there. For five hours. You heard that right. No need to touch that sucker for FIVE HOURS. Go live your life. Be free. Well… maybe not totally free. You do have an oven going in your house… so… don’t go too far…

*five hours later*

Next step is where we get that dark, sticky lacquer developing on the belly. We bump the oven up to 325ºF/165ºC and take the belly out of the oven. Before the pork belly goes back into the oven at the higher temperature, unwrap the belly out of the foil and parchment paper, and place it back onto the ovenproof dish, again with fatty/skin side up. If any liquid collected in the the parchment/foil while the belly had been cooking, you can discard it.

Mix together all the lacquer ingredients. Spoon just enough on top of the belly to coat the top surface and place the belly back in the oven. We are going to cook the belly for another hour at this higher temperature, taking it out of the oven every 10 minutes to spoon a bit more lacquer over the top. As it cooks for this last hour, the lacquer will caramelize and cook down into a dark, sticky sweet coating.

Once the hour is up, take the pork belly out of the oven and let it sit for 5-10 minutes in its dish. Transfer it to a cutting board and slice into your desired thickness with a sharp knife. And I mean a really sharp knife. Because that pork belly is so tender from all that low and slow cooking, anything less than a super sharp knife will simply tear that meat up. Seriously, you could probably talk to it a little too harshly and it would fall apart.

Last, but most important, serve and eat! Below, we have the pork belly partnered with some ravioli and a kale caesar salad. Is that kale caesar made from the same caesar dressing as from my Brussel Sprout Caesar Salad? You bet it is. Is that some sparkling rosé to bring it all together? Heck yeah. Enjoy.

Happy eating.