Oven Roasted Pork Belly
Using the same light Asian flavours as the Sous Vide recipe, this recipe is done in the oven where the Pork sits in a shallow liquid so it almost braises and creates a delicious light broth.
When cooking the oven roasted pork belly seen in the above image, we actually cooked sliced pork spare ribs, which is essentially just cut up pork belly. Wanting to cook them like a whole piece, the sections were placed standing up in the tray, which increased the exposed surface area, helping the flavours to penetrate deeper but also reduced the cooking time. This recipe can be done with the slice pork spare ribs or with a whole belly.
To get this dish underway you'll be needing:
- 1 Large Pork Belly (sliced as spare ribs or kept whole)
- 1 Thumb sized piece of ginger sliced.
- 6 whole star anise
- 4 spring onions
- 4 tablespoons of soy sauce
- Water
- Sea salt flakes
The method:
- Pre-heat the oven to 220oC degrees. Rub the salt into and over the skin of the pork. Bruise the spring onions with the side of a knife or by twisting them in your hands and lay them on the bottom of a small roasting tray. In the image you'll see we've used a round glass dish, that is slightly larger than the pork.
- Place the whole pork piece or stand the sliced pieces together upon the spring onion. Scatter the ginger, star anise & soy sauce around the tray and add enough water until the pork is roughly half submerged.
- Place the tray or dish into the oven and check periodically, after about 15 20 minutes when the skin starts to crackle, lower the oven temperature to 180oC degrees. The pork will need to be cooked for around 45 minutes per kilo. Don't fear, pork belly has plenty of fat and its being cooked in a liquid so it wont dry out very easily and can be cooked for several hours longer (at around 160 degrees) if you are chasing a pull apart textured finish.