Hello!
Welcome to one of the first recipes that we’ll be sharing with y’all. Before we created HBCO, one of our go-to dishes was crispy roasted pork belly, but there wasn’t a chili oil that really complemented the pork belly so this dish was definitely an inspiration for us to make chili oil. We want to give credit to Kirbie’s Cravings for sharing her recipe, but for our recipe, we’ve tweaked it a little to our liking.
This is a fool-proof, can’t-fuck-it-up, and guaranteed favorite party dish because it’s so easy to make – there’s only 3 stages of cooking this and we’ll break it down below for you. But first, let’s start on our kitchen equipment and ingredients!
Serving size: 4-6 people
Kitchen Equipment:
- Baking pan or glass pyrex baking pan (anything to hold the pork)
- Aluminium foil
- BBQ grill net
- Paper towel
- Super sharp/pointy knife
Ingredients:
- 1 slab of fresh boneless pork belly (2 lbs.) (you can find this at your local Asian supermarket)
- 8 cloves of garlic (it’s honestly however much garlic flavor you want in your marinade)
- 1/2 tablespoon of Chinese five spice
- 1/2 tablespoon of freshly ground white pepper
- 2 cups of table salt (this is for a salt crust on top of the skin)
- 1/2 cup of dark brown sugar
- 3/4 cup of soy sauce
- 3/4 cup of shaoxing cooking wine
- 1/2 cup of water
Marinade:
- Go ahead grab your baking pan and we’re going to be using it to marinade the pork belly. Mince the garlic and add into baking pan, add 3/4 cup of soy sauce, 3/4 cup of shaoxing cooking wine, 1/2 cup of water, 1/2 cup of dark brown sugar, 1/2 tablespoon of freshly ground white pepper, 1/2 tablespoon of Chinese five spice – mix well before adding pork belly into baking pan.
Preparing the Pork Belly:
- Once you’ve got the pork belly out of the bag, place the pork belly on a cutting board. Once that’s completed, get paper towel and pat the skin dry. It’s important to keep the skin as dry as possible for crispy skin.
- Carefully place the pork belly into your baking pan with the marinade, try not to get the skin wet from the marinade. Place in fridge for 4 hours. (Recommend: overnight) And voila! You’re half-way to making delicious crispy roasted pork belly!
Oven Roasting Time:
- Set your oven to convection roast and preheat at 350°F. Now that the pork belly is nice and marinated in the fridge, go ahead and take that out and remove the marinade from the baking pan. You can definitely cook the marinade and turn it into a sauce for later! Once the baking pan is empty, add 1 inch of water into the baking pan and place the BBQ grill net on top of the baking pan.
- Place the pork belly on the BBQ grill net – Grab a sharp, pointy knife and poke holes all over the skin so that it’ll be able to bubble nicely when it’s in the oven. After, take out foil to create a wall around the pork belly. This is where we’ll need the 2 cups of salt on top of the pork belly. You’ll notice that the wall provides the enclosure to have salt nicely even on the skin. Once that’s in the oven for 40 mins or when the meat looks cooked, a salt crust would form and the purpose of that is to suck up all the moisture of the skin – prepping for next stage of roasting.
- Go ahead and take that out of the oven and remove the foil. Toss away the salt crust and use a knife to remove the remaining salt. It’s okay if the salt goes into the baking pan, we’re not using that water anyway. Set the oven to 465°F and place the pork belly back into the oven and let it sit for about 40 minutes or until the skin is completely bubbly and crispy. (If the skin is not bubbling up after 40 minutes, put the oven on convection broil at 425°F and carefully watch the pork belly as it will bubble up real fast!) Once you’re finished, let the pork belly rest for about 20-30 minutes before cutting it. We recommend using a cleaver to cut it!