Crispy Pork Belly

Saturday, December 25, 2010

Crispy Roast Pork Belly

One of the most common dish at Christmas is the turkey but being in a Chinese family, it was never our tradition to celebrate Christmas with a turkey. And so tasked with a Christmas dinner to be prepared with the elder generation as guests, I decided to skip that celebrated bird altogether and go for a roast dish that is more Asian in nature and hopefully more palatable for my guests.

And was I glad to have made that decision. The Roast Pork Belly was welcomed by all and declared excellent by my family and relatives – a near-impossible feat as they are experienced cooks themselves.

To be honest, it was my maiden attempt doing it at home and without a proper oven to boot. The night before I was still poring over my microwave oven’s user manual, trying to figure out how to get to the roast function. The manual was too skimpy to be adequately helpful but the closest I could get to was to use the Combination 5 function which meant that the food would be cooked at the temperature closest to what the recipe called for. I knew it was going to be a huge gamble because there was no mention of what the Combination function actually does!

So I was really relieved when the Roast Pork Belly turned out beautifully and everyone had a good time feasting together.



Crispy Roast Pork Belly


Ingredients

1kg pork belly with skin on
1 tbsp salt
1 tbsp Chinese five spice powder
Some Popiah sweet sauce


Method

1. Fill a wok with enough water to submerge the pork belly and bring to a boil. When water is boiled, turn off heat and scald pork belly in wok for 15 min. (Parboiling the meat helps remove its odour) Remove the pork belly and discard water.

2. Place pork belly with meat on work surface and skin facing up. Stab skin vigorously with fork, leaving small gaps between punctures made to allow skim to blister nicely during roasting.

3. Rub salt and Chinese five spice powder all over the pork.

4. Preheat oven at maximum for 15 min. Place pork belly on roasting rack with skin facing upwards. Roast at 220 deg Celsius for 1 hour.

5. Remove from oven. Knock all over the skin with spoon. It is ready if it makes a sound like when a spoon is knocked against a hard surface. Otherwise, return to roast for 20-30 min or until skin is crispy.

6. Place pork belly on chopping board with skin facing down and cut to desired size.

7. Serve with drizzle of Popiah sweet sauce, if desired.


Reference : Care Cook Connect

3 comments:

Marshall Lynch said...

look so delicious,i love it.
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Random Rodriguez Ramblings said...

I just stumbled across you blog and love it! I can not wait to try this meal out in my house!

Elorie said...

Your recipe is somewhat similar to the one my mother and I make for company. It is so delicious, although we add ginger and spring onion! So tasty! Best of luck to you (: