A Pork Belly Journey

Upon perusing the intrawebs, I see that there’s not a lot of recipes for crispy pork belly.  After trying my hand at various methods of cooking this cut, I can see why.  It seems to be very difficult to get the meat juicy AND crispy skin at the same time.  It also requires a LOT of time.  Days even.  But I’m not to be deterred.

I’ve marinated and scored and rubbed and dried these suckers with wildly varying results.  Skin?  Or no skin?  The Googles appear to be divided on this.  Broil or torch?  Deep fry perhaps?  Braising seems to be popular.  The point is, there seems to be a hefty dose of luck involved in getting crispy skin on top of juicy pork regardless of the flavor.

It’s been literally decades since I made a porchetta.  The last one I made…geeze…I was living in Brooklyn…and that was what?….twenty years ago or more?!  There was no pork belly involved, I’ll tell you that much.  This time, I skipped the whole loin/tenderloin and made the entire thing from pork belly.  Crazy!  I was definitely nervous about how this was going to turn out.

I’ve found that when I’m doing a culinary experiment, I like to have Pam and Sandy over.  My first time meeting Pam, we discussed my dry brownie.  Remember….I’m a terrible baker.  I brought it up as being dry and she agreed it was.  I have loved her ever since.  I know she’ll be kindly honest.

I started with one side of belly from our whole pig.  I cut the smallish end off to make as even of a square as I could.  I salted the piece I wasn’t using, covered it, and put it in the fridge.  With the remaining larger piece, I flipped it skin side down and butterflied the meat.  To that I added some herbs, some olive oil, a little pepper, a little salt, and wee bit of lemon zest.  Then I rolled it up, tied it, stuffed it in a bag, and dropped it into the sous vide on 160.

Now.  There were a few sous vide recipes out there.  Most dictated a twenty-four hour bath.  I think that’s too long so I took mine out at the ten hour mark and I was glad I did.  I cooled it, rubbed salt all over the skin, and stuck in the fridge for about seventeen to eighteen hours.  It could have easily sat in the fridge for at least another day or even two.

After wiping all the salt off, I put it in the oven on 500 with convection and crossed my fingers.  Everything seemed to be going well, but I felt like it was taking too long so I got out my torch to speed it up.  It was okay, but still not quite there so I hit in the broiler.  Aaahhh…the quest for the crispiest skin.

My oven, however, had enough of that nonsense and gave me the F10 Err middle finger.  Yes.  I broke the oven.  And the smoke alarm was chirping it’s own annoyance at my all belly porchetta.  But everything was fine!  Hubs and Sandy unplugged my exasperated oven and someone smashed the smoke alarm with a hammer.  Not really, but I fantasized about it.

In the end, the all belly oven breaking prochetta was delicious.  Next time, I think I’ll deep fry it instead.  Luckily for me, I have another side of pork belly calling my name from the freezer right now.  Taunting me…daring me to another crispy skin challenge.  I’m down!  I think I just need one more shot at it before posting the recipe.  I’m so close!  What’s going to happen?!