Great New Year with Crackling Pork Belly Sage

Tags

bread, carrot, ciabatta, crackling, crackling pork, mustard, pork, pork belly, pork sandwich, potatoes, roast pork, roast pork belly, roasted carrot, roasted potatoes, sage, sandwich, sea salt

Full Belly Meal

Happy New Year, everyone!! It’s been 2 months since the last recipe post. I’ve been dying to get a bit of time to do some recipe trials again. And, luckily, today is the day.. 🙂 .

I’ve been eye-ing this recipe for so long. It is a simple hearty slow roast crackling pork belly. For this new year, i think it is proper to make a hearty meal for the lunch. To accompany the pork, I made a loaf of Ciabatta bread and some roasted vegetables.

I have been eating a lot of pork lately, but despite of that, this pork belly is absolutely to die for. It has crackly top, juicy meat, peppery smell and tasty, it is just how i like it. And it doesn’t stop here, this pork belly comes with a delicious gravy, it is soo damn good, i could eat the gravy with plain rice or spread it on top of my bread. I think this recipe is a keeper.

Things you need:

500 gram of Pork Belly Slab (1,5 kg would be good- in case you can’t control your self)
A handful of sage – roughly chopped
Kosher Salt (I use mushroom sea salt)
Black pepper
1 tbs plain flour
100 ml rice wine/dry wine
200 ml chicken stock
1 stalk of celery – roughly chopped
1 stalk of leek – roughly chopped
1/2 or 1 bulb of onion – roughly chopped
4 cloves of garlic – bruised, skin on

Roasted Vegetables

4 small potatoes – wash cleaned
2 small carrots – wash cleaned
1 tbs dijon mustard
1 tbs olive oil
1 tbs garlic salt powder

Things you need to do:

Pre-heat the oven to 220 C. Score the pork belly with 1 cm apart from each other. Season the pork belly generously with salt, sage and pepper, make sure you put it in between the silts. Pat the pork dry with paper towel. Roast the pork in the oven for about 25-30 mins or until the skin is crackling, crispy and has that golden brown color.

In meantime, prepare the potatoes. Cut the potatoes and carrot into smaller pieces. Put it in the baking tray, pour in the olive oil, garlic powder, and the mustard. Toss in all together evenly.

Lower down the oven to 170 C, pop in the potatoes and continue to roast the pork and potatoes for another 10 mins. Take the pork out from the oven, add in the leeks, onion, celery and garlic. Put the pork on top of the vegetables, and continue roast the pork for another 30 mins.

Check on the potatoes and carrot from time to time, once it is cooked through take it out from the oven (it will takes around 30 mins to cook them).

Once the pork is cooked, take it out from the baking tray and put it on wooden board, wait for 10 mins before you cut it.

Take out the vegetables and oil from the baking tray, put them in the cooking pan. Add in the flour, mix it well and cook it over low heat for a while. Add in the cooking wine and chicken stock, then reduce. This will be the gravy for the pork.

Serve the pork with the roasted potatoes, carrots, ciabatta bread and the gravy.You can also make a sandwich out of it ;).

Happy New Year!

Notes to help you gets that crackling goodness:

When you score the pork belly, make sure you don’t score too deep or too shallow. Make sure you only score the skin and the fat (not all the way through the meat).
Pat the pork dry before you roast it in the oven, if necessary (if your pork belly is really wet), put it in the fridge for a couple of hour or even overnight to dry it out.
The bigger the pork belly, the longer the cooking time. The above cooking time is for 500 gram pork belly