Tis a much maligned piece of meat, pork belly! However, cooked properly it is the most delicious meat.
Of course, you need to start with a good piece of meat to get the perfect roast too! So do put some thought into sourcing your joint first.
As we keep saying here…. you need to know what the animal is fed! It does effect the final outcome! If the pig is fed ‘bad stuff’, the meat will not be good. Simple!
We don’t often get to keep pork belly for ourselves… but there was a small piece in the freezer at the weekend…. just perfect for two. I grabbed it quickly before a customer came and took it away! 🙂
Ingredients:
- 1 kg. free-range pork belly
- Salt
Method:
Heat oven to 150 deg. C
Score the skin well. Dry with kitchen paper getting down into the score marks too. Sprinkle liberally with salt….. don’t be afraid…. you cannot overdue the salt at this stage.
Place meat on shallow oven tray lined with foil.
Roast at 150 deg. C for 2 hours.
Raise the temperature up to as high as your oven can go! Mine goes to 240 deg. C and finish off pork for half an hour.
You will end up with delicious succulent meat and the crispiest, to die for, crackling!
We served ours with roast potatoes – cooked in with the meat. And the first of our cabbage from the garden, just sauteed in some butter!
Enjoy!
Looks delicious M, such a tasty piece of meat, treated simply, served with roast potatoes & cabbage, even better 🙂
Colette, it was delicious… and just enough for the two of us. The cabbage straight from the polytunnel was just so sweet too!
M
Tasted as good as it looked…even better in fact..
Looks like you two enjoyed a wonderful meal!
Thank you Paula,
It was delicious…. all except potatoes grown here! Hope to harvest potatoes soon!
Margaret
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I’m in the U.S. so a large size pork belly was hard to find. I’ve a question on the method. I used another recipe (from Ireland) that instructed to cook just the opposite—high temp 1st for 20 minutes, then the low temp the last 2-2 1/2 hours. Have you tried that and found your order of temperature works best?
I haven’t tried it with he high first… but funnily enough that would be the way I’d do lamb. I must try to grab a piece of belly and cook it using your method. I guess either way will work, as the high temperature is to make the ‘crackling’ really.