Your friends and family will be amazed at how tasty this pork belly is with its crispy skin and its succulent meat. You are going to be amazed at how easy it is to make and that its lack of effort means you can work on other dishes. I even got out into the garden to plant some snow peas while it was cooking :).

You will be:

1. Preparing the pork belly.
2. Cooking the pork belly round 1.
3. Cooking the pork belly round 2.
4. Resting the pork belly.
5. Serving.

You will need:

• Ingredients:
  • ~1.5 kg pork belly
  • spray olive oil (for convenience really)
  • a generous amount of table salt to crisp the skin
  • ~1L full cream milk
  • 8 garlic cloves
  • a handful of sage
  • 2 tsp fennel seeds
•  Equipment:
  • a long sharp knife
  • a chopping board
  • an oven dish
  • kitchen shears

Preparing the pork belly

1. Preheat your fan-forced oven to 240C.
2. Use a sharp knife to score the skin, I used a criss-cross pattern and might have gone too deep.
3. Spray with the olive oil spray and work in a generous amount of salt.

Cooking the pork belly round 1

1. Pop the pork belly, skin side up, in the oven pan and then into the oven for about 30 minutes (we are looking for the skin to be starting to crisp up).

Cooking the pork belly round 2

1. Add the full cream milk to the pan, stopping before the level touches the skin.
2. Add the 8 or so garlic cloves, the handful of sage leaves and 2 tsp of fennel seeds.
3. Turn down the oven to 180C and cook for another hour.
4. Turn the oven back up to 240C and cook for 10 to 20 minutes to get the skin super crunchy.

Resting the pork belly

Pop the pork belly on a wooden board or the like and cover with foil for 10 minutes or so.

Serving

I tried a few things here. I cut the pork belly into strips with kitchen shears and tried a few pieces. The skin is crunchy and the meat was moist. It took a lot of will power not to eat what would be about 4-6 servings :).

I then added slices to a cauliflower and parmesan soup that was the original reason for cooking the pork belly in the first place. Please check out PK’s Creamy Cauliflower Soup With Pork Belly.

Enjoy,

PK