Crispy pork belly served with nectarine and wine sauce

Nectarines, Shawn Godfrey aka The Roasted Dad

Tips

Pork belly dishes have always been my favourite to cook. I have smoked pork belly, oven baked, braised, pressure potted and put it in the Weber. But ultimately, I have found the best pork belly is done in an oven where consistency and accurate temperature control can be kept. The biggest challenge with cooking pork belly is that we all want the crunch and rendered fat on the top and a succulent pork beneath. This can sometimes be trickier than we often realise to perfect but after tons of trials I formulated my favourite recipe for pork belly. A few game changers I have found are as follows:

  • Never score the fat. The steam from the meat passes through the scoring making it a real challenge to crisp up and get that beautiful puffy crackling.
  • Try at all costs to avoid vacuum sealed belly, the blood from the meat will make it that much more challenging to work with for that beautiful crackling. Ask your butcher to freshly cut your belly from the counter.
  • Leave your belly open in the fridge overnight. The dry environment of the fridge will give your crackling that extra boost!
  • Ensure that you cook your belly with the top being level, this will ensure you have an even crackling and not puffed on one side and flat on the other. Use tin foil to prop up the underneath that is thinner than other sections.
  • Make a tinfoil basket covering the sides of the flesh as much as possible to expose this as little as possible to the direct oven air while cooking.
  • Try get the best quality, even fat and flesh thickness possible.

Ingredients

  • 1.2kg-1.5kg pork belly
  • Maldon smoky salt
  • 4 nectarines for the sauce
  • 100g nectarines for garnish
  • 1 cup of Chenin Blanc
  • 1 Tbsp of brown sugar
  • 1 tsp of nutmeg
  • 1 tsp of cinnamon
  • 2 Tbsp olive oil

For the Dressing

  • ½ cup balsamic vinegar
  • 1 Tbsp honey
  • tsp Dijon mustard
  • 2 tsp fresh garlic
  • Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
  • 12 Tbsp of olive oil

Method

  1. Refrigerate the pork belly overnight open with cling wrap around the flesh part of the meat.
  2. Preheat oven to 140̊ ̊C(120 ̊C fan oven)
  3. Generously salt the pork with Maldon salt and cracked black pepper.
  4. Use tinfoil to prop the pork belly up ensuring the top of the fat is level.
  5. Cover the flesh of the pork belly with tinfoil making a parcel but ensuring the fat is all exposed and cook for 2.5 hours.
  6. Turn up the oven and then cook for 20 minutes at 250 ̊C (or 220 ̊C if using a fan oven).
  7. How to prepare the nectarine sauce
  8. Slice the nectarines into ½ cm slices
  9. Add olive oil and bring a pan up to a medium heat.
  10. Add the wine, sugar, nutmeg and cinnamon to the pan and leave to simmer until a syrup-like mixture has formed.
  11. Add the nectarines.