Crispy Skin Marinated and Roasted Asian Pork Belly

Most don't know this, but I spend my weekends researching recipes and looking for inspiration on the internet.  When I am not blogging, cooking, entertaining or drinking wine I am researching what I am going to cook over the next few weeks.  I like to be at least a few weeks in advance and always have some thing to blog about.

I did some research on fivespice and saw that the below spice and flavour combo's seemed to work.  I added cayenne pepper cause I love that its so spicy.

This recipe was inspired by the NZ Masterchef season 2 final. The marinade I came up myself and I thought it would be amazing and used a similar cooking technique Nadia Lim did with her pork belly in that finale.  So here it is!

Ingredients

600 grams of Pork belly

2 teaspoons of five spice

1 teaspoon of cayenne pepper

8 tablespoons of oil

2 heaped teaspoons of crushed garlic

1 cup of water

2 teaspoons of soy sauce

Lots of salt

Method

 Score the pork skin and and rub in 2 tablespoons of oil and generously coat the skin with salt. 

 In a bowl, Add the five spice, cayenne pepper, 1 tablespoon of oil, garlic, soy sauce and water and mix. 

 Place marinade in a large bowl put the belly in, making sure it does not touch the prepped skin.  Sit in the fridge for 2-3 hours.  

Preheat oven to 170 degrees Celsius.  Add the pork skin side up and the marinade to a baking tray and put in the oven for 1 hour and 30 minuets.  

After 1 hour and 30 mins, take the pork out to double checked it is cooked through.  I did this buy taking the pork out, placing it skin side down on a chopping board and cut through the flesh to see if its cooked. 

 If it is not cooked through put back into the oven for longer monitoring it till its cooked.  Once it is cooked, place it skin side up put 2 tablespoons of oil and coat it in plenty of salt. Basically you are making crackling out of it so the more the better.   Set aside the marinade and cooked juices for basting.

Turn the frypan on a medium/high heat and use the remainder of the oil and place the pork belly skin down on the frypan.  Place a small baking tray or anything with a flat surface on top of the pork belly and add some weight. 

 Keep there for 10-15 minuets till skin has turned into crackle.  keep checking to make sure it does not burn.

Take the pork belly off the frypan once the crackle is satisfactory, place back into the roasting tray and   

baste the crackle and the meat with the marinade that was set aside and put back into the oven. 

 check every five minuets and continue basting crackle and the meat.  Once the marinade has been use up, your pork belly should be cooked!  When slicing go for 1cm slices.  

Serve!


I have cooked this twice now and am thrilled with the result!  It is quite amazing!