Crispy Roast Pork Belly 脆皮烧肉

12.9.14 (Fri)

I am a super lover for roast pork belly. I remembered when we were in Malaysia, when it comes to ordering chicken rice, I would order roast chicken + roast pork belly. I always see FaceBook posting on friends making roast pork belly and I decided to try it out too! And as always, I like to refer to my "sifu" 's recipe, ie Christine's recipe. (I referred Christine as my sifu coz I really learnt a lot from her webpage on cooking, baking and tips)

 

So yesterday, I bought thick pork belly and marinated it overnight. And this morning, I took it out and baked for around 40mins and "ta-da", I was quite happy with the result. Hubby liked it and will definitely try making it again to get even better result!

 

First attempt

Second attempt

Second attempt

(adapted from Christine's recipe)
Ingredients:1.2 kg pork belly
1/2 Tbsp Shaoxing wine, optional (I omitted this)
rock salt, to taste

Seasonings:
3½ tsp salt (I think can reduce)
2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp five-spice powder

Method:
1. To prepare the seasonings: Combine salt with sugar and five-spice powder well. Set aside.

2. Use a knife to scrape away any impurities and hair. Rinse thoroughly. Blanch in boiling water for about 15 minutes, until 60 to 70% done, and the skin is softened. Drain well and wipe dry with paper towels.. Use needles to poke the rind as many holes as possible. Turn over to other side, cut a few slits on the meat to help absorb seasonings better.

(I don't have needles so I used a fork instead)

3. Rub wine evenly on pork. Let rest for a while. Coat the meat with seasonings evenly. Make sure there‘s no seasonings on the rind, otherwise the five-spice powder will darken it.

4. Wrap the pork meat with foil and leave the rind unwrapped. Place in fridge, let air dry overnight in fridge.

5. Preheat oven to 200C/395F.

6. Remove pork from fridge and remove foil. Let rest at room temperature for a while. Poke the rind with needles evenly once again. Wipe dry. Season the rind with rock salt. Bake in preheated oven for about 30 minutes. Increase temperature to 220C/430F, bake for 10 to 15 minutes, or until you get enough cracklings. (If ordinary oven used, move the pork from middle rack to upper. Grill the rind until evenly blistered and browned.)

 

 

  

Notes:
The tricks of making crispy cracklings:

First, the rind must be very dry.

 

Second, poke as many holes as possible. While grilling, the fat inside the rind turns really hot, then get released from the holes. That produces an effect of a kind of “frying” the rind. So, it turns crispy.
Mind you, don’t poke too deep through the rind though. The rind won’t be crispy any more otherwise.
 

Basically, the temperature is the same, no matter you use convection oven or ordinary one. But an ordinary oven needs longer cooking time.

The cooking time depends on how thick and how big the pork belly is. Please adjust accordingly.