– I have tried many different recipes from the Youtube and finally have distilled to the following steps that are necessary to make good roast pork.
Ingredients:
- 2kg of Pork Belly
- 2 tsp of baking powder / white vinegar
- 1 tbsp of coarse sea salt
- 2 tbsp of white vinegar
Marinade for Pork:
- 2 cubes of fermented red bean curd
- 1 tbsp of five spice powder
- 0.5 tsp of fine salt
- 2 tbsp of rice wine
Method:
- Remove all hair from the pork skin. I use a disposable shaver to do this.
- Wash and dry the pork belly. Poke as many holes as possible on the pig skin using a meat tenderiser, a bunch of skewers tied together or even the sharp tip of a knife. The holes poked should not be deeper than the pig skin.
- Lay the pork belly, skin side down. Make some shallow cuts along the meat side (1 inch spacing, depth up to 1/2 of the pork thickness).
- Mix the marinade and rub it all over the meat (excluding the skin) making sure to rub the marinade into the slits made by the cuts.
- Flip the pork belly, skin side up. Clean off any marinade that got onto the skin to prevent burning.
- Rub the baking powder into the pork skin. If you don’t have baking powder, brushing white vinegar on the pork skin will also do.
- Next, rub some coarse salt on the pork skin. This will extract moisture from the pork skin and will help to make the skin crispy when it is roasted.
- Put the pork belly skin side up on a tray and leave it uncovered in the fridge for 24 hours. This will dry up the pork skin further.
- After 24 hours, remove the pork belly from the fridge 30 minutes before roasting.
- Use aluminium foil to make a tray the height of the roast pork to hold the roast pork skin side up so that the pork meat will still be moist after the roasting.
- Brush white vinegar on the pork skin to dry it further.
- Put the tray of roast pork on a rack in a pre-heated oven (fan mode) at 180 C and roast for 1 hour.
- Remove the roast pork from the oven. Prick any big bubble forming on the skin.
- Brush more white vinegar on the pork skin.
- Set the oven to broil mode at 210 C. Put the roast pork back into the oven for 10-20 mins. Watch the pork belly at this stage to make sure it does not burn. Remove the roast pork once you see that all the pork skin has blistered and turn crispy.
- Leave the pork belly to rest for at least 30 mins before cutting preferably with a chopper.
- Enjoy the pork belly with the crunchy skin!
