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3 Ways to Cook Pork Belly

pork belly

If you’re getting a little tired of your weekly grocery shopping list, may we suggest a little shake up? Tasty Ontario pork belly is deeply satisfying and packed with flavour.

For pork aficionados, pork belly is IT.  Here’s a look at three easy ways to cook it:  stovetop, grilling and oven roasted. It’s a triple threat on the delicious front.

Stovetop:

Use 500 grams of pork belly, basically enough to cover the bottom of your pan in one layer. Remove the skin, and wash the pork belly in salted water. Pat the pork belly dry, then cut it into 1-inch pieces (1/4-inch in thickness).
If you want to season your pork belly, do it right before cooking. I like this mix: 2 tablespoons of fish sauce, 3 tablespoons of sugar, and one tablespoon of water, 2 cloves of garlic.
Turn your stove to medium-high heat, and let it cook uninterrupted for three minutes. A little smoke coming off the pan is natural.
After three minutes, you should be hearing some nice crackling. Once you hear it, flip the pork belly pieces over and make sure the sides get even. Once even, you may decide to move the pork around in the pan for another three minutes.

Top with cracked pepper and serve.

Grilling:

When you grill pork belly,  marinate it overnight using the same recipe as in the stove top method above. Remove the pork belly from the fridge about 30 minutes before grilling.
Score the skin with a sharp knife with a cross-hatch appearance. This allows the fats to run off while the pork belly is cooking and crisping up.
Preheat grill to medium heat. For gas BBQ, turn off burners on the one side; for charcoal, push the coals to one side. Place a drip pan under the grates on the cooler side of the grill to catch the fat.
Brush grill grates with vegetable oil and place pork belly on cooler side of the grill and cook, turning occasionally until meat is fork tender but not falling apart (2.5 to 3 hours).
During the last 5 minutes of cooking, place the pork over the hotter side of the grill to get some greater color and grill marks. Transfer the cooked pork belly to a cutting board and let it rest for 20 minutes before cutting it.

Slice the pork belly and tuck in.

Oven:

Preheat the oven to 180 °C. Score the pork belly skin with a sharp knife to create a cross-hatch appearance.
Season the pork belly with the recipe above. Then fry pork belly, skin side down, in a pan over medium, or medium high heat and cook for at least 5 minutes until golden brown.
Turn the pork over, add broth (I used vegetable broth). Place some veggies (carrots, zucchini, onion) in an oven pan, and then transfer the pork to the pan once the broth boils.
Cook for 2.5 hours in the preheated oven. Once cooked, transfer the meat to a cutting board and let it rest for 20 minutes before cutting it.

 

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