Perfect Pork Belly & Crackling!

How to make the perfect pork crackling that will have your mouth watering!!!

Pork Belly is so much easier to cook than a pork shoulder, leg etc...it doesn't dry out like many other pork roasts can tend to do.

• I take a slab of pork belly and score the skin (ask your butcher to do this for you), rub it with salt and then layer an oven proof dish with 2 layers of tin foil, you surround the pork with foil just like a little package with the top uncovered, bake for 2 hours at 150C bake. 
• If you want to make it super moist then inside the foil pour some milk and you will have the pork melting in your mouth! (you don't have to do this) 
• Once cooked remove the pork from the oven and slice off the skin, cut into bite sized pieces, place the pork belly in the foil and leave to rest. 
• Bake the skin for another 10-30 minutes at 180+C , if the skin hasn't crisped up by baking it at a high temp then you can grill it but watch it very carefully! 
• Best results come from baking it slowly 
• All pork belly cooks slightly different too, free range crackles every time whereas non free range can be harder to crackle. I hope that helps the beginner pork belly cooks out there ;) 

Pork belly with Five spice veggies!

Pork belly with Five spice veggies!

Ingredients:

• Bok Choy (discard stalks - unless you can be bothered cooking them separately!)
• Green beans
• Orange capsicum
• 3 small peeled Shallots sliced
• 1 de-seeded Chilli sliced
• 2cm piece fresh ginger
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 2 Tbsps Butter
• 2 tsps Chinese five spice
• 2 Tbsps Gluten Free soy sauce
• 1 tsp brown sugar
• 1 Tbsp tomato sauce

Sauté your shallots, chilli, ginger, garlic in butter and sesame oil, once tender add the spice, sugar, soy sauce and tomato sauce, add green beans, capsicum and cook but still crisp, then add bok choy at the end for quick cooking and add a couple tablespoons of water. Serve underneath roasted pork belly.

Roasted pork belly

Preheat oven to 150c fan bake. Score skin of pork belly and rub salt all over, cook uncovered for 2 hours, remove skin and grill to crisp!

Crumbed Pork & Sage Sausages

One of my Facebook fans sent me an email with this amazing recipe it needs to be shared, these taste awesome and completely gluten free sausages, husband approved also ;)

I served mine with sautéed savoy cabbage and parsnip chips.

Another great thing about this dish, it's cheap! The pork cost me $4.50 on special and will do us two meals or will feed a family of 4. Who says you can't do primal on a budget, there's always a way!



Crumbed Pork & Sage Sausages

Ingredients:

• 1/2 chopped red onion
• Butter
• Ground almonds 
• 400gms pork mince
• 1 Tbsp dried sage
• 1 clove garlic crushed
• ¼ cup grated parmesan cheese
• Pinch dry nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp salt. 

Put chopped onion in a small saucepan with 1T butter. Cook very gently for about 5 minutes until softened but not golden, leave to cool.

Add all ingredients to bowl, mix then shape like sausages, rolling in the ground almonds. Chill for awhile up to an hour. Heat some fat and butter in a pan and cook sausages until golden brown and pop in preheated oven at 180C for 10 minutes to cook through.

Makes 8 Sausages

Crispy Pork Belly!

This is a thai version of cripsy pork belly! Definitely not for the faint-hearted ;)
This takes a lot of preparation but completely worth it....the orginal recipe can be found here: http://3hungrytummies.blogspot.co.nz/2009/11/muu-krop-crispy-pork.html

• 1 kg pork belly or more
• 2 Tablespoons of kikkoman gluten free soy sauce or Coconut Aminos
• a sprinkle of sugar
• dash of pepper
• beef tallow for deep frying

Marinate your pork belly with the soy, sugar and pepper for at least 4 hours or overnight.  Remove marinated pork from fridge and steam over a steamer or pot steamer for 1 hour, check the water and top up with boiling water if necessary.

Remove pork from the steamer, prick the pork skin all over with a folk. Mix 2tbs of salt and 1tbs of white vinegar into a paste and rub it over the pork skin. Cut pork into 2cm strips and leave them in the fridge uncovered overnight, this is a very important step to dry the pork out.

Fry pork strips in hot beef tallow until golden delicious.  Drain well and it's ready to be eaten!!
I didn't want to overcook mine so I removed them, sliced the pork skin off and put the skin back into the deep fryer until crispy!  I kept the stock from the steamer and then made a gravy with it, I found it too rich with the pork belly so instead we opted for some sweet chilli sauce and it was AMAZING!!

Lard - the new olive oil

I stumbled across this interesting piece of info on lard, it's an old post but very relevant, big thumbs up I reckon.

http://blogs.sharemynz.co.nz/gordon/the+big+fat+lie/lard+-+the+new+olive+oil?id=25484

Last week I asked my local butcher to save me up the pork fat so I can render it as lard :)