My first cooking thread! Slow roasted pork belly with crispy crackling

[Participant]

Hi all

As per http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=13990088&postcount=10, I made a tender but crispy pork belly joint on Saturday. It's a great recipe as the pork tastes incredible but is very cheap, £3.50 for this joint which will just about feed four people (can't remember the weight of it), and you can probably get it even cheaper.

Here's how to do it.

Untie the joint and chuck the strings. Most belly joints come tied in a cylinder shape, but I cook this one flat as the crackling is far better. Score the skin two ways to create a criss-cross pattern. You can do this after drying the skin in the fridge but it's easier when the skin is moist. Don't go down to the flesh as it will dry it when it cooks. The skin protects the flesh from direct heat in the oven

Leave the pork with the skin exposed in the fridge for at least 48 hours and preferably for 4 days to dry the skin out. Use layering tissue to cover the flesh to protect it from drying out

Coarsely grind a tablespoon of rock or sea salt in a pestle and mortar

And liberally cover the skin, rubbing the salt into the cracks (snigger)

Crush some black pepper in the mortar and season the underside with salt, pepper, garlic, and chopped rosemary (or stab bits of rosemary into the flesh)

Press some kitchen foil firmly onto the meat side. This compresses the seasoning and holds the herbs in place whilst cooking

Then flip it over to create the foil nest. This protects the meat and also allows the meat to cook in its own juices. It's like a self-baster. Over the course of the 4 hour cooking time, this creates a lovely crust on the bottom of the meat

Drizzle with a little olive oil

Wack it in the preheated oven, fan oven temps: 125 degrees C for 3.5 hours, then 200 degrees for 20-25 minutes to crisp up the crackling (hopefully your oven is cleaner than ours!)

It's not necessary if you've done it right, but if the crackling needs a little help, cut the crackling layer off and put it under a medium grill for ten minutes while the pork is resting in the cooling oven

2 hrs in

Guinea pig not loving the cooking of her namesake

4 hours in, ready to rest for 20 minutes

The underside, almost as nice as the crackling

Sliced, pork meat is still perfectly tender

...and served with jersey royal potatoes tossed in parsley and butter, broccoli, and a crème fraîche and white wine sauce

My main advice if you try this is - don't take shortcuts, as the crackling will suffer! It might also be worth rotating the roasting tray every hour if you've got an old / bad oven, because as you can see, one side of my crackling has crisped up better than the other.

Cheers

 

[Participant]

Lol how does this thread keep getting brought back to life? People searching cooking maybe?

Anyway - Messiah Khan, apologies but I didn't see your post in June about the vegetables. I don't really know the answer as I normally steam my vegetables, but I would imagine that sticking some vegetables in the nest under the pork 30-40 minutes or so before the pork is done (depending on temperature of oven and how you choose to finish off the pork) would create some amazing veg.

Re all the comments about more veg and potatoes, I ate the pork on the plate in the photos and the same again. Meat is far more important than veg .

 

[Participant]

Thanks for the bump Khan .

Worst I have an expensive watch thread ever!

Might be fake!

I have some belly cooking tonight with this method (though I didn't have time to dry out the skin for two days so I used a hair dryer instead).

That's a good idea, I might try that next time to save the hanging around period and add to the possibility of getting an instant crispy pork hit at a moment's notice (well, 4 hrs notice anyway).

 

[Participant]

It worked really well actually, though I definitely over-salted the crackling. It was kind of inedible, but the texture was awesome

The pork itself was great though I wish I'd had the patience/self-control to leave it roasting for an extra hour.

I normally brush the salt off with a basting brush (or whatever) after it's cooked. If you use salt flakes, its easier to remove the salt that if you grind it on. All that effort for over-seasoned crackling is the most disappointing thing ever.

I've got some in the freezer. I love a good pork belly and have been playing around with temps and times. Best I've found so far is put it on a wire rack, with water underneath, cover whole top with foil and pretty much steam it at 80 for about 6-8hrs(depending on size of belly). Make sure that the water never goes dry too. You can rub the meat before hand but then also flavour the water. Then, salt skin and cook for 30minutes on 190 it will puff up nicely.

That sounds interesting. I wonder why the steam doesn't diminish the crispiness of the crackling? That said I love braising shoulder of lamb and finishing it in the oven. It goes so crispy on the outside but still tender in the middle.

I tried brining the pork before roasting too the other day (see thread entitled 'Brining') which worked really well in terms of flavouring the meat. The crackling wasn't quite as good as this but you need to thoroughly dry the skin between brining and roasting.

 

[Participant]

Sounds good.

Speaking of presentation, I once did the slow cooking part the day before we ate it, then left it in the fridge overnight compressed by a heavy baking tray and some food tins. Then when you want to eat it, you simply wack it in a pan skin side down (from room temperature) to heat through and get the crackling going.

Works really well and the 'compress and cook twice' tactic both increases the flavour and flattens the layers of fat, making it (arguably) more pleasant to eat if the fat hasn't rendered completely.