{"id":7415,"date":"2019-01-28T17:30:53","date_gmt":"2019-01-28T17:30:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.burnedatthesteak.com\/blog\/?p=7415"},"modified":"2019-01-28T17:33:26","modified_gmt":"2019-01-28T17:33:26","slug":"a-pork-belly-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.burnedatthesteak.com\/blog\/2019\/01\/28\/a-pork-belly-journey\/","title":{"rendered":"A Pork Belly Journey"},"content":{"rendered":"

Upon perusing the intrawebs, I see that there’s not a lot of recipes for crispy pork belly.\u00a0 After trying my hand at various methods of cooking this cut, I can see why.\u00a0 It seems to be very difficult to get the meat juicy AND crispy skin at the same time.\u00a0 It also requires a LOT of time.\u00a0 Days even.\u00a0 But I’m not to be deterred.<\/p>\n

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I’ve marinated and scored and rubbed and dried these suckers with wildly varying results.\u00a0 Skin?\u00a0 Or no skin?\u00a0 The Googles appear to be divided on this.\u00a0 Broil or torch?\u00a0 Deep fry perhaps?\u00a0 Braising seems to be popular.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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It’s been literally decades since I made a porchetta.\u00a0 The last one I made…geeze…I was living in Brooklyn…and that was what?….twenty years ago or more?!\u00a0 There was no pork belly involved, I’ll tell you that much.\u00a0 This time, I skipped the whole loin\/tenderloin and made the entire thing from pork belly.\u00a0 Crazy!\u00a0 I was definitely nervous about how this was going to turn out.<\/p>\n

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I’ve found that when I’m doing a culinary experiment, I like to have Pam and Sandy over.\u00a0 My first time meeting Pam, we discussed my dry brownie.\u00a0 Remember….I’m a terrible baker.\u00a0 I brought it up as being dry and she agreed it was.\u00a0 I have loved her ever since.\u00a0 I know she’ll be kindly honest.<\/p>\n

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I started with one side of belly from our whole pig.\u00a0 I cut the smallish end off to make as even of a square as I could.\u00a0 I salted the piece I wasn’t using, covered it, and put it in the fridge.\u00a0 With the remaining larger piece, I flipped it skin side down and butterflied the meat.\u00a0 To that I added some herbs, some olive oil, a little pepper, a little salt, and wee bit of lemon zest.\u00a0 Then I rolled it up, tied it, stuffed it in a bag, and dropped it into the sous vide on 160.<\/p>\n

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Now.\u00a0 There were a few sous vide recipes out there.\u00a0 Most dictated a twenty-four hour bath.\u00a0 I think that’s too long so I took mine out at the ten hour mark and I was glad I did.\u00a0 I cooled it, rubbed salt all over the skin, and stuck in the fridge for about seventeen to eighteen hours.\u00a0 It could have easily sat in the fridge for at least another day or even two.<\/p>\n

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After wiping all the salt off, I put it in the oven on 500 with convection and crossed my fingers.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 It was okay, but still not quite there so I hit in the broiler.\u00a0 Aaahhh…the quest for the crispiest skin.<\/p>\n

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My oven, however, had enough of that nonsense and gave me the F10 Err middle finger.\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 I broke the oven.\u00a0 And the smoke alarm was chirping it’s own annoyance at my all belly porchetta.\u00a0 But everything was fine!\u00a0 Hubs and Sandy unplugged my exasperated oven and someone smashed the smoke alarm with a hammer.\u00a0 Not really, but I fantasized about it.<\/p>\n

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In the end, the all belly oven breaking prochetta was delicious.\u00a0 Next time, I think I’ll deep fry it instead.\u00a0 Luckily for me, I have another side of pork belly calling my name from the freezer right now.\u00a0 Taunting me…daring me to another crispy skin challenge.\u00a0 I’m down!\u00a0 I think I just need one more shot at it before posting the recipe.\u00a0 I’m so close!\u00a0 What’s going to happen?!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Upon perusing the intrawebs, I see that there’s not a lot of recipes for crispy pork belly.\u00a0 After trying my hand at various methods of cooking this cut, I can see why.\u00a0 It seems to be very difficult to get the meat juicy AND crispy…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7413,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wprm-recipe-roundup-name":[],"wprm-recipe-roundup-description":[],"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.burnedatthesteak.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/IMG_20190127_190047_2-1.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pagICo-1VB","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.burnedatthesteak.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7415"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.burnedatthesteak.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.burnedatthesteak.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.burnedatthesteak.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.burnedatthesteak.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7415"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.burnedatthesteak.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7421,"href":"https:\/\/www.burnedatthesteak.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7415\/revisions\/7421"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.burnedatthesteak.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.burnedatthesteak.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.burnedatthesteak.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.burnedatthesteak.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}