Roasted Pork Belly with Fennel Seeds
Serves 6
Cooking Pork belly is all about the crackling, so take your time when scoring the meat. Scoring is cutting evenly spaced parallel lines through the skin and fat of the belly. This will allow the crackling to get really crisp. Practice makes perfect.
Mix the garlic with the fennel seeds and rub over the flesh of the belly. This can be done the night before. Store the meat in a tray in the fridge, place another tray on top of the meat and weigh it down.
This will flatten the meat and give you a more even crackling when it comes to cooking.
Turn the meat over and generously sprinkle with fine sea salt.
Leave for half an hour, then dust off excess salt and mop up any moisture with kitchen paper.
Score the meat using a small sharp knife or stanley knife. The cuts should be 1 cm apart and cut through the depth of the skin and fat but not all the way to the flesh.
Pre-heat the oven to 230°C. Lay the onion slices into a roasting tray greased with the olive oil and place the pork belly on top. Place the tray in the hot oven on the top shelf. Roast at this high heat for 30 mins until hard crackling has formed, then turn the heat down to 190°C and transfer to a clean roasting tin.
Continue cooking for another 2 - 2 1/2 hours until the meat is tender. Remove from the oven and transfer to a chopping board to rest for 15 mins, loosely covered with tin foil.
Meanwhile make the gravy. Pour off any excess fat and place the roasting tray on the hob on a low heat. Deglaze with the wine or sherry, scraping the juices off the bottom of the pan as you go. Simmer for a couple of minutes and taste for seasoning. If it tastes too strong, dilute with a splash of water.
Ingredients
2 kg pork belly
3 cloves of garlic crushed with salt in a pestle and mortar
1 tbsp freshly ground fennel seeds
2 tbsp olive oil
150ml fino sherry or white wine
2 large onions cut into 1cm slices
Salt and pepper
Tip
Do check on the pork from time to time as the crackling may start to get too dark.
If one part of the crackling is starting to get too dark, just cover that area with tin foil and it will prevent it from burning.
If some of crackling has got too dark you can always scrape the burnt layer off with a knife. Make sure you do this over a chopping board or at least away from your roasting pan otherwise all those little burnt bits will contaminate your roasting juices/gravy.
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