Make The Most Crispy Pork Belly with Juicy Tender Meat

Craving for roasted pork belly / Sio bak/ Siu Yuk at home with blistered and shatteringly crunchy rind, here’s how to do it from home.

This crispy pork belly goes well with everything from stir fry greens, to paring with noodles, as finger food party treats, serve mustard dip, rosti and sauerkraut.

Steps to choosing a good slab of pork belly. Choose one that has alternating layers of fats and meat for the best results. The fat below the rind should not be too excessive as the fats will melts away in the process of roasting and the portion will significantly lesser.

Scrap the rind of the pork belly with the blade of a knife to remove excess moisture from the skin. The skin needs to be as dry as possible for it to be crispy.

After scrapping the skin with the knife, wipe off the white foamy scum with a kitchen towel, the softer part of the pork skin needs to scrap more as these contains more moisture.

Proceed to poke holes right through the rind using your torture equipment “stabber” so that when the roasting begins in the oven the fats beneath the rind can escape and help to create a crispier and more puffed up rind. The more holes stabbed, the more crispy “blisters” there will be on the roasted pork rind.

After that score the rind in a herringbone pattern.

Make sure the slit is just deep enough to cut through the rind and reaches the next layer of pork fats.

Next, prepare the ingredients for marinade for the meat 1 tsp five spices powder, 1 tsp of pepper, 2tbsp coarse salt, 2 tbsp rice wine. The rice wine is to reduce the porkiness of the pork. Mix all these in a bowl and brush on the meat portion only, avoid the rind to preserve a nice colour after roasting.

Do a light score in the meat for the marinade to go on to the meats. Rub in the marinade and massage into the pork.

Season the rind with salt to draw out the rest of the moisture from rind. Rub the salt into the rind to draw more moisture from the pork skin.

Wrap the pork belly entirely in aluminium foil boat tightly, exposing only the pork skin.

Chuck this into the fridge uncovered overnight for 12 hours or longer, the air helps to dry it up.

When the skin turned a darker brown, it means the skin is sufficiently dried. The next day, remove at least 1 hour from the fridge before baking and use a kitchen towel to dab off any excess moisture on the pork belly. We want it nice and dry for the crispy skin.

Now stab the rind again with the torture tool before roasting. Preheat oven to 250 degree for 20 mins. The pork belly should be on a grill pan lifted off the pan so that the excess juice will drip off the meat when roasting. When the pork belly sits in a pool of juice to grill, the roast pork belly will not be as crispy as one that is lifted off the base of the grill pan. Do take note of this important tip. Load the pork belly into the middle rack of the oven and roast for 40 mins minutes.