Chinese Crispy Pork Belly

I never knew how easy it is to make this until I tried them. Chinese Crispy Pork Belly or Siu yuk is a Chinese style roasted meat traditionally seasoned with salt and vinegar in a charcoal furnace under high temperatures giving it that crisp skin and juicy and tender meat.

Siu yuk or Chinese Roasted Pork Belly are those slabs of meat you usually see hanging in front of Chinese restaurants. Usually served with just rice and steamed Asian greens this perhaps is the simplest way to cook pork belly but it’s one of the most delicious ones too, I do love this and crave for it once in a while, luckily this is easily available in almost all Chinese restaurants. Looking at that big slab of meat hanging might look intimidating to prepare at home but trust me all you need is patience but even those who are beginners in cooking will be able to nail this quite easily, just follow the tips and steps below to yield the perfect result every time.

There are only four main tips you need to perfect this recipe, first make sure you get a nice quality pork belly, those ones with 5 layers (skin, fat, meat, fat then meat). Next make sure you prick the fat layer many times with a sharp metal skewer but make sure not to prick it too deep, it should only break the skin surface and not go to the fat layer otherwise it will be blotched in some parts like my photo :), it will still be crisp but won’t look as good. Third tip is to let the skin dry out, removing the moisture so it puffs up in the oven, best way to do this is to place it in the refrigerator uncovered overnight others also leave it in the sun to even dry it out. Finally, before roasting it in the oven, cover the top layer with rock salt so when it bakes, it continues to draw moisture out of the meat helping to guarantee you’ll get crispy crackling every single time, don’t worry that amount of salt won’t make the meat very salty, that is why we protect the edges from it using a foil wrapper.

Following those tips, you will be rest assured that the result will be perfect every time. There is nothing hard on it, it’s just season and bake. Like I said the only hard part is waiting for it to dry and cook.

Chinese Crispy Pork Belly

★★★★★ 5 from 1 reviews

• Author: Raymund
• Prep Time: 20 mins
• Cook Time: 1 hour 40 mins
• Total Time: 2 hours
• Yield: 8 1x
• Category: Main Course
• Cuisine: Chinese

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Description

Chinese Crispy Pork Belly or Siu yuk is a Chinese style roasted meat traditionally seasoned with salt and vinegar in a charcoal furnace under high temperatures giving it that crisp skin and juicy and tender meat.

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Ingredients

Units MUS Scale 1x2x3x

Roast Pork

• 1 1/2 kg whole slab pork belly, skin on
• 1 1/2 tbsp white vinegar
• 300 g rock salt

Marinade

• 2 tbsp Chinese cooking wine

Dry Rub

• 2 tsp five spice powder
• 1 tsp white pepper powder
• 1 tsp salt

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Instructions

1. Using a small sharp knife with a thin tip or an ice pick, prick lots of holes in the skin as many as you can. When you prick the skin, do it on a shallow manner and avoid piercing through until the fat later.
2. Turn the pork belly down, rub the meat not the skin with Chinese cooking wine. Sprinkle all the dry rub ingredients then massage all over the flesh with your hands including the sides.
3. Turn skin side up, place in a container. Dry the skin with paper towels then refrigerate uncovered overnight.
4. Remove pork belly from the fridge then place in into a large sheet of aluminium foil. Fold the sides of the foil wrapping it snuggly around the pork with a 2 cm gap on top above the pork skin serving as the wall for the salt not to fall outside the skin surface.
5. Transfer pork with foil into a baking tray then pat try the skin again with some paper towel to remove moisture from temperature drop.
6. Brush skin with white vinegar then spread the rock salt on the skin making sure the salt is snugly secured on top and does not fall into the sides where the flesh is covered by the foil.
7. Roast in a 180C preheated oven for 1 hr and 15 mins.
8. Remove pork from oven, fold the foil down then remove the salt layer. You can reuse this later as a pork flavoured salt. Once salt is fully removed, remove pork from salt, transfer pork into the baking tray.
9. Set oven to grill at 220C, place pork in the middle rack then grill for 20 to 25 minutes occasionally checking if the top is evenly golden brown. Grill until skin is golden and crispy.
10. Remove from oven, let it rest for 10 minutes before cutting into serving pieces.

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