Under the skin
Whether perfectly flat or rolled up with string, roast pork belly is all about the crackling
For me, the whole point of roast pork is the skin – if it’s not going to be crisp, you might as well braise or steam it (which is good in a different way). After years of cooking it, I’ve come to the conclusion that while rolling the slab of meat makes it look nicer, it tastes better when cooked flat. With rolled roast pork, it’s difficult to get the skin to cook evenly – parts of it remain chewy while only some of it crisps. We rolled ours for this photoshoot, but if you want the whole layer of skin to be crisp, leave your roast pork flat.
Ask the butcher for a nice piece of pork belly, with good layerings of fat and meat, and as evenly thick as possible. If you have the time, rub the marinade into the meat and refrigerate, uncovered, for several hours – this lets the marinade penetrate, and will help to dry the skin.
To puncture the skin (which helps to make it crisp when cooked), I have a rather intimidating implement – bought very inexpensively at one of the kitchenware shops on Shanghai Street, Mong Kok – with a lot of sharp metal spikes imbedded in a wooden handle. Using this requires strength – you need to press it through the skin so it penetrates the fat. If you don’t have one of these, score the skin in a diamond pattern using a very sharp knife.
Pork, according to the United States Department of Agriculture, is cooked sufficiently when the internal temperature reaches 63 degrees Celsius. Because pork belly is so fatty, it needs more time than other parts of a pig to cook to become tender. I test it by inserting a thin-bladed knife into the thickest, meatiest part of the pork; if it slides in and out of the meat easily, it’s ready.
You can add other vegetables to the pan the pork is being roasted in, including whole heads of garlic, potatoes (blanched briefly in salted water, then drained), sweet potatoes and Brussels sprouts. The garlic, potatoes and sweet potatoes will need about an hour to cook, the sprouts about 30 minutes. Take the vegetables from the pan before turning up the heat to crisp the pork skin.