PERFECTLY CRISP PORK BELLY
SERVES 4
PREP + COOKING TIME:
2 HOURS 10 MINUTES, PLUS 10 MINUTES’ RESTING TIME
Until now, I’d never managed to get uniformly crisp crackling on my pork belly at the same time as delivering a beautifully cooked, unctuously fatty piece of meat underneath.
Don’t bother trying to score the skin with a knife or a blade from the tool box; stabbing the skin with toothpicks takes 2 minutes versus 15 minutes trying to score through the thick skin with even your sharpest knife.
The key to getting that ultracrisp skin is to mix a little bicarbonate of soda with salt and rub it on to the skin before putting the meat in a cold oven. This allows the pork and the oven to warm up together, which means unctuous fat layers and tender meat. Most importantly, the fat below the skin renders down, leaving the top layer to crisp. Plus there’s no waiting around for the oven to heat up. Make sure your pork is not fridge-cold when you put it in the oven – take it out of the fridge 20–30 minutes before you plan to start cooking.
• 1.5 kg pork belly
• 2½ tsp fennel seeds, crushed
• 1 tsp dried chilli flakes
• freshly ground black pepper
• 2 tsp fine sea salt
• ¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda
FOR THE SWEET-AND-SOUR APPLE PICKLES
• 3 dessert apples, cored and cut into matchsticks
• 1½ tbsp apple cider vinegar
• 1½ tbsp honey
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1. Make sure the surface of your pork is really dry – leave it uncovered in the refrigerator overnight or use some paper towels to pat dry the surface if necessary. Use a couple of toothpicks or sharp skewers to prick the skin all over as many times as you can, working left to right, right to left and up and down until it has been pricked many times – you don’t want to pierce the skin, simply poke the surface.
2. Mix the crushed fennel seeds, chilli flakes and some black pepper with 1 tsp of the salt, then rub the mixture all over the meat side of the pork belly. Transfer it to a roasting dish. Mix the bicarbonate of soda with the remaining 1 tsp of salt, then rub it all over the skin.
3. Put the dish in a cold oven and set the heat to 180°C/160°C fan. Roast the pork for 1½ hours, then increase the oven temperature to 220°C/ 200°C fan and cook for a further 30 minutes. Remove the pork from the oven, brush off any white sediment on the skin and discard. Transfer the pork to a chopping board and allow to rest for 10 minutes.
4. To make the sweet-and-sour apple pickles, mix the chopped apples with the vinegar and honey, season and set aside until ready to serve.
5. To carve the pork, flip it over so it is skin-side down on the chopping board. Use a sharp knife to cut through the meat, then apply some pressure and let the knife break through the crackling. Serve immediately with the pickles.
Make ahead:
This can be made two days in advance and stored in the refrigerator, then reheated.
The shortcut:
Not preheating the oven saves time, and using bicarb is a fail-safe trick for achieving perfectly crisp skin without having to hang around the grill to monitor its progress.