How To Make the CRISPIEST Chinese Roast Pork Belly TODAY...no overnight salting! | Marion's Kitchen

Alright guys, just look at that crunch. Listen to the sound, that's all I need to say. We are making my version of Chinese-style crispy roast pork. Crispy pork belly, like the holy grail of roasted meats. We are doing the very traditional Chinese version today. I have figured out a way that we can get our crispy roast pork without a whole bunch of steps. Without overnight salting, all those sorts of things. Because I'm always in a hurry for crispy roast pork, who isn't? Alright, let's get down to the technique first of all. Let's chit-chat about pork belly. Now, this is the kind of pork belly that you're looking for. You really want... Like obviously, you want a really good layer of meat. You don't want it all to be fat. But you do want a nice little cute layer of fat underneath the skin. So that is a pretty perfect piece in my book. You want like a nice rectangular sort of piece as well. Because the whole idea with Chinese roast pork belly is that it gets cut into nice, cute little pieces. Bite-sized crispy pieces. Alright, so what we need to do with the pork first of all is get the skin super dry. So important. Moisture will be your enemy when it comes to crispy crackling. So get some paper towel and just really rub that skin really well. Get it nice and dry. And now this next step might seem a little bit weird. But it's very, very necessary. Trust me. So if you happen to live in a Cantonese restaurant, you would have the proper metal skewer tool for this. It looks like a brush. But it's all metal skewers and you sort of punch, punch, punch, punch. I don't have one of those. I'm assuming you don't either. So we're going to go with a good old toothpick. Get yourself a toothpick or a cocktail stick. And we want to punch as many, many holes in here into the skin. Just into the skin as possible. So just poke, poke, poke. It's kind of a little sort of harder at the edges. But we go a bit slower through here. And then once you kind of get into it, you can go super fast. So keep going and you want as many holes as possible. Be patient here. Also, the wooden toothpicks tend to get a little blunt. So you'll have to like swap them over as you go. So if you take a look here, you really want almost the whole thing covered in those tiny holes. Why this is so important is that what happens is, when it's roasting, the fat comes up from underneath that layer of skin through those holes. And the hot fat actually comes out to cook the top of that pork belly. So super important. Don't skip that step. Now let's get to a little bit of flavour. We've worked on our crispy crackling here. Now I want to make sure we've got a really beautiful flavour on the meat side. So I'm going to go in with some Chinese five-spice on the meat. And you want a little pinch of salt here too. And then just give that a really good rub all over. Pat that on there. Now I want to wipe off those spices and the salt from the top of the pork. And now what we're going to do next might seem very unconventional. But trust me, it works a treat. We need to make a little foil protector around the outside of our pork. Just grab a piece of foil. And then fold it up like this. And then just wrap it around the edges of that pork really tightly. So this foil wrap is going to do 2 things. It's going to protect that meat part from getting too overcooked or too burnt or anything like that. And then it's also going to help to keep our next layer in place. And what is that next layer? It is salt. A lot of it. Watch this. I'll show you how it goes. So we pour the salt all over the top. And then just smooth that salt out so you have a really good covering. I don't want to see any little bits of that skin poking up out of the salt. This is... Okay, I know. It totally looks crazy. But what's going to happen is that salt is going to become like a salt crust. It will start to draw out the moisture from the pork skin and absorb it so that the moisture doesn't sit on the skin and make everything all soggy. So this... Trust me, you'll see. So when it comes to the roasting, there's a little bit of technique here as well. We're going to roast it really low and slow for 2 hours first of all. And that is going to make sure that our meat is beautifully soft and tender and a lot of that fat has either rendered down or rendered up out onto the skin. Then, we're going to come back and take a look and finish off the crispy part a bit later. Okay, so there's like a special kind of magic in the air when there is pork cooking in the oven. That smell is so amazing. And that beautiful 5-spice smell as well. So good. Okay, let's have a look at what's going on in here. Now, I just want to transfer this to a board. Now remove that foil from the outside. And what you should have here is some pretty good-looking pork underneath there. And then that kind of salt crust on the top. So what we want to do now is get rid of all the salt, as much salt as possible. It's done its job and then we can get to the crispy crackling part. So let's get the salt off. And you really want to get in there with like a brush or even some paper towel and just wipe off the salt on all the sides here. Now transfer your pork back onto your baking rack. This guy needs to go back in the oven because you would have noticed we don't yet have any crispy skin. Don't worry guys, it's coming. But I want you to get some paper towel and again dry off that skin before we get it into the oven because we really don't want any moisture ruining all our hard work. And now I've turned my oven up super super hot. And I want to get this back into the oven until everything is puffed up and golden and crispy. Alright, so house is smelling ridiculously porky. Have a look at this magic though. Look at that beautiful even crispy golden crust. I mean, does it get any better than that? I don't think so. I am so ridiculously excited. Okay, let's get cutting. I want to see all of this crispiness. I want to hear... Oh, I can hear it already. Now slicing this guy, pure pleasure. Just listen to this crunch. Now I like to serve it here just like I get it at my favourite Cantonese restaurant in Bangkok. That is with just a little bit of mustard and a little bit of hoisin sauce. And here we go guys, the ultimate test. The test that I've been waiting to do all day. That crunch, so epic. And that beautiful Chinese five-spice crust. And do you know what? It is absolutely not too salty. I know, amazing right? It just has a beautiful amount of seasoning but it's not overly salty. It's just crunchy and porky and completely heaven. Love this one guys.