Roast Pork Belly.

[Don]

Roasted a pork belly last night. £3.70p - enough for two very hungry people. Turned out the best meal I have done for a while.

Method: For a 0.7Kg Pork belly.

Slash the skin. Rub with salt, sprinkle with Thyme. Halve a red onion and place two halves on a roasting dish. Ten cloves of a peeled garlic around that. A couple of carrots, peeled and cut into batons around those. Place the pork belly on top of the above.

Roast in a pre-heated oven at 230C for half an hour. Turn heat down to 180. Roast a further 45 minutes.

If, like me, you love really crispy crackling cut this off now. Place between two glass plates and microwave. Just three or four minutes should crisp it to perfection. Cover the meat in foil and leave to rest for at least fifteen minutes.

During which time I made the gravy: discard the onion and carrots. Pour in enough stock, deglaze the pan and thicken.

I also made home made apple sauce.


Served with potato/sweet potato mash and some broad beans. Yum.

[Cactussed]

I am cooking this next Sunday for lunch.
Thinking I will do it with some caramelised apples, fondant potato and parsnip puree.
Might do some roasted veg on the side like beetroot and carrot for colour. Still stewing in my brain really.

Might do a carrot and beetroot consomme to start as they always look cool.

Desert could be a crumble I think.

[Mobile Chicane]

Baked fennel is good with pork.

Slice some fat bulbs in half, parboil in acidulated water, drain, pop in a dish, dot with butter, grated parmesan and bake until the cheese bubbles...

[jamiebae]

That's one of my faves to cook, although I tend to cook it for longer and finish the crackling off in the oven. Also, you can put the pork on a rack over a tin with water in it to cook which keeps the base a bit more moist, and gives you a really nice base for the gravy too.

[Pferdestarke]

Crisp pork belly is one thing I crave at least every few weeks. I have mixed results with it. My girlfriend won't eat it so I just pick at it and don't tend to have it as part of a meal.

Sometimes it's tender beyond belief, other times it's still a little rubbery. Long and slow to get the fat rendering, then a blast for 15mins to get the crackle going is what gives me the best results. Plenty of salt too.

I also seem to have more luck with larger pieces if I'm doing it for others, rather than a 4 inch wide piece just for me.

So bad for you though!

[Don]

I have tried doing pork belly with a "slow cook" technique. 90C for six to eight hours - then into a blastingly hot oven for twenty minutes to get the skin to crackle.

To be honest I think the quick cook technique works better.

It's always a trade-off with crackling, I find. I like the pork meat to be moist and soft and not overdone. Inevitably this makes getting the skin to crackle a problem with smaller cuts of pork. So I always end up cutting the skin off at the end and blasting it.

The microwave technique is such a boon. You can take a piece of browned but not crackled pork skin and get it to a perfect, crispy state in four or five minutes.

The only problem is the ENORMOUS amount of popping and spitting it will do which makes for a disgusting mess in the nuker. So I pop the skin in between two glass plates (not stacked - one turned over to make space) and this contains the mess beautifully.

Since I am almost always cooking a small cut for just the two of us that would otherwise dry out it's a handy technique.

[sleep envy]

if you pour boiling water over the cut skin it gives excellent crackling but keeps the belly moist when you roast it

[jbaddeley]

Try roasting it the day before. Let it cool then press it in the fridge over night. I use a pyrex dish on top of the pork and put tins inside the dish. Re-roast the next day. Fantastic served with chorizo cassoulet.