Pan-fried Pork Belly

A lovely and super beginner friendly pan-fried crispy pork belly recipe. No oven needed, no marinating process needed. Only need 5 minutes operation and leave all of the other efforts to the pan.

Pork Belly is so popular in Asian recipes

I love the magic piece from the pig’s abdomen. Pork belly and butt are my two favorite parts. Pork belly is very popular from East Asian and there are tons of yummy recipes using pork belly. Among all the list items, you may hear about the twice cooked pork belly which comes from Sichuan cuisine, oven baked crispy pork belly from Cantonese cuisine and red braised pork belly from almost everywhere. I love pork belly so much because

1. pork belly is a very lovely cut of meat. A good pork belly cut has five layer of meat in which 2 layers of lean meat and 3 layers of fat. Wow, it is so beautiful because of the texture of the color. Due to that unique texture, it has rice flavors combing from both lean meat and fat meat. When cooked properly, it can be extremely comforting and delicious.
2. pork belly is a very versatile meat cut. Almost all cooking method, roasted, braised, pan-fried, stir-frying even steamed can be applied. It can be also used as dumpling filling or steamed bun filling. So more creative ways lead to fabulous and lovely result.

Following are some of the most popular asian style pork belly recipes.

1. twice cooked pork
2. Roasted crispy pork belly
3. Roasted pork belly with honey
4. RouJiamo– where pork belly is used as filling
5. Sichuan fried pork
6. HongShaoRou- Red braised pork belly

Highly recommend this to beginners

Among all of my pork belly recipes, this is my first recommendation to beginners. Little cut experience needed, no marinating process, no bowl sauce prepared. All you need is the lovely pork belly cut, a pan and some seasonings.

Tips for crispy surface

In the oven crispy pork belly version Cantonese crispy pork belly (Siu Yuk), the crispy texture coming from the skin. But with this method we need to remove the skin because it needs longer time of cooking that can’t match with the meat part. The crispy texture come from the surface of the meat cut. It is a different dimension of crispiness that need less chewing work.

Tips for choosing pork belly

1. When choosing pork belly, it is important to select a cut that is well marbled with a lovely five layers. But you can make a personal choice about more lean meat or more fat meat.
2. Avoid the pork belly with blemishes or bruises.

What you will need

• 2 beautiful pork belly cut
• 1 pan with good heat storage capacity
• salt
• ginger
• Sichuan peppercorn

Instructions

how to prepare pork belly

1.Remove the skin of the pork belly. This can be done by scoring the skin with a sharp knife. If you prefer less fat part, you can remove the extra fat with the skin.

2.Soak pork belly in clean water for 30 minutes. This process helps to more the impurities and raw flavors of pork belly.

Cook the pork belly

3.Load a pan or wok with water to cover, add ginger, scallion and Sichuan peppercorn in the water and place the pork belly in. Start the fire and heat until boiling.

4.There will be lots of foams floating on the water, make sure all of the foams are carefully removed. Cover the continue cooking over small fire and covered until all water is gone … Takes around 30 minutes.

Make the surface crispy

When the water is all gone, continue heating and there will be some thickened paste at the bottom of the pan, use a kitchen paper to erase them so it will be get burnt in the following process.
Fry the pork belly for 20 seconds on one side and turn around to fry the other side. Repeat the process until both sides are well browned and crispy.

Cut and serve

Cut the pork belly into slices and serve with a dried spice mix. You can see the beautiful crispy shell around the meat.

How to serve

This crispy pan-fried pork belly is highly recommend to serve with lettuce wrap or a spice mix. It is great to partner with salad like smashed cucumber salad.