Roast pork belly with black pepper
Almost like lechon kawali (although I cook my lechon kawali in the oven) but this recipe does not require that the pork be parboiled prior to roasting. Inspired by a peasant dish featured in the Spice Trails episode of Planet Food (over Discovery & Living Channel), this roast pork is seasoned with salt and cracked black pepper hours before cooking. Yes, cracked — not ground — black pepper. I had to think about that hard because I didn’t think my kids would enjoy eating anything with pieces of black pepper that large.
I decided on freshly ground pepper (a pepper mill is really handy in this case) instead. In Spice Trails, the pork belly was cooked in an outdoor clay oven using live coals. Well, I don’t have anything similar so I cooked mine in my Elba gas oven.
It’s a very simple dish (the benchmark of peasant cooking is simplicity, isn’t it?) and there are only three ingredients — boneless pork belly, salt and black pepper. But you will also need a very sharp knife.
To serve 4 to 6 people, you will need:
a slab of boneless pork belly, about 1-1/2 kilos
salt
black pepper
Lay the pork belly flat on a chopping board, skin side down. Cut square patterns on the meat, almost through the skin. I didn’t cut deep enough so the seasonings didn’t penetrate all the way through. It’s something I’ll have to remember the next time I cook this dish. Cut deep into the meat — it’s important.
Next, get the salt and rub it into the pork, including where you have cut through. Then, the pepper. Crush the black peppercorns with a mortar and pestle or use the coarsest setting of your pepper mill. Rub the black pepper all over the meat including those crevices between the squares. Allow to marinate for several hours. If I remember correctly, in the Spice Trails episode, the pork was left outdoors, covered. I kept mine in the fridge, covered, for about six hours.
Preheat the oven to 325oF.
Place the pork, skin side down, on a roasting rack and cook in the oven for an hour to an hour and a half.
Unlike lechon kawali, the pork rind (skin) won’t puff up and turn crisp. You might think you can achieve that by roasting the pork skin side up instead of down but remember that this is not parboiled pork and the meat has been cut almost through the skin. If you cook the pork skin side up, all the meat juices will drip into the pan along with the melted fat. And you really don’t want that. You want the pork to cook in its own juices so consider this dish as something not unlike lechon kawali but without the cracklings.
Personally, I prefer lechon kawali, parboiled then cooked in the oven until browned and the rink all puffy and crisp. But I have to admit that the simplicity of the dish featured in Spice Trails entails less work. And, unlike parboiled pork which can be kept in the fridge only for a day or so (you really need to cook it soon or the meat will turn dry), uncooked pork seasoned with salt and pepper can be allowed to marinate in the fridge a bit longer. Think of it as brining pork for making ham because the salt actually cures the meat so you don’t have to worry much about spoiling.
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hi connie….thanks once again for sharing..
i tried to e-mail you but it didn’t go through,maybe
i got the wrong address…
can you kindly give me your e-mail address if it is OK….i can’t post my note here…thanks
emy
Emy, I just emailed you. You can just hit reply.
Ms. Connie, re: pepper mill. The one in Cooks Exchange is one Christmas gift that I’ve been eyeing for myself for weeks.
Go for it, Soloops. You can even add dry herbs to the salt and you can season your food with herbed salt!
I love pork belly no matter how you make it. Yum, yum, yum!
Is it possible to cook the pork belly your way, and in the couple of minutes of cooking, turn the oven settings to broil and then turn the meat upside down so the skin is exposed to the heating element? I’ve done this before, and although the skin didn’t completely puff up, it came out crisp.
tsinkoy, if you like crisp puffed skin, follow the traditional lechon kawali recipe then oven grill instead of frying. The link to the recipe is in the entry above.
hi connie!
it´s really a shame that my hubby doesnt like fatty foods but still am trying to make the lechon kawali asap lol .. he said he´ll just taste it but no fats … i will definitely check on your lechon kawali recipe or the like… i miss our lechon in pinas..(sigh..)
hi miss connie,
kakagaling lang namin ng husband ko sa European Market this morning to buy fresh meats, before I checked your recipes, sayang dapat pala nag check muna ko kagabi ng website mo, kasi nalimutan kong bumili ng pork belly…alam mo yun sana nag plan muna ko ng recipes bago namili…LOL…para sarap pa naman nitong Roast Pork Belly..dali pang gawin.
God bless you always and thanks for the recipes, fan mo ko for 3 years na.