Crispy Crackling Roast Pork Belly in 1 hour

Hey everyone, I'm Flo. Judy's behind the camera and we're all about simple food, simple faith. We are making a super crispy roasted pork belly. Roast pork belly is a common dish for celebrations and this past Chinese New Year, we saw lineups that were just insane. But this dish is really, really simple to make at home. You can find this recipe in my cookbook, Daily Special. I have this beautiful piece of pork belly that is beautifully marbled. It has the skin on and you want the skin because that's where the crispiness is going to come and the skin is the crackling that you would normally see on roasted pork. I recommend buying the pork belly from a butcher so that you can get a piece that has even thickness throughout. I actually bought this at T&T, which is our Asian supermarket here, but from the butcher and not already pre-packaged on the shelves in the cooler. Especially for festivals and celebrations, they will have pieces like this ready to go. The one I purchased was actually twice the size so that I could show you how to make it and I cut it in half. This piece is one and a half pounds and we're going to get started. First, I'm going to make my seasoning. I'm using one teaspoon of kosher salt, one eighth of a teaspoon of ground white pepper, and a quarter teaspoon of five spice powder. Five spice powder is a combination of star anise, cloves, cinnamon, pepper, and fennel seeds. That's usually what's in five spice powder, but you can get it already pre-packaged like this or you can ground your own. Put that together. We're going to flip this over to the meaty side and use just a teaspoon of Shaoxing wine. We're just going to rub it into the meat until it's all absorbed. Now, Shaoxing wine is a cooking rice wine. You can get it in the supermarkets and if you don't have Shaoxing wine, you can use regular rice wine. We've also been known to use bourbon. That just adds an extra flavor. The Shaoxing wine is a bit floral so it just does add some fragrance to the meat. Actually, this piece of silver skin, I'm going to try to remove this. All right, just rub it all in. Okay, then we're going to use all of the seasoning. Again, this is one and a half pounds of pork belly. You use all the seasoning and rub that in. Sometimes I find at the barbecue places that they put too much of the seasoning at the bottom and I don't like that. I find that this amount is the perfect amount, that the flavors are not overbearing at the very bottom. I hate getting that very salty, intensely flavored bottom piece. I think the butchers also roast a whole entire side of pig so who am I to say how much spice is too much? Okay, flipping it over. All right, now the fun part. In order to get that crispy crackling, all kind of bubbly and well crispy, I'm using a meat tenderizer and we're going to jab holes into the skin. If you don't have one of these, this has like a bunch of like nails, basically. If you don't have one of these, you can use a metal skewer or just a paring knife and just like poke as many holes as you can the top of the skin. I don't know if you can see but here are the holes. I also want to score the top in two places so that it'll be easier to cut once the crackling is all crisped up. The knife is really hard to get through that so I'm just going to cut through the skin here without going too deep. I just want to cut the skin, not go into the fat. And lastly, we want to salt the top and this will help to draw out the moisture because we're going to let this sit in the fridge now for at least 24 hours and up to maybe even 72 hours. And because I'm able to prepare in advance to show you, this is the pork belly that I marinated yesterday. So it's been 24 hours and we're going to cook this one and replace this one to marinate in the fridge. So you can see that the is dried. So you want to put it in the fridge uncovered. Don't cover it. And if there's any moisture left on the top, you should dab it but there's none. Look, it's all dry. Perfect. I'm going to put this on a piece of foil and I'm going to scrape off any salt. I don't think there is any. I think it's all absorbed into the skin and we'll put this one in the fridge. If you like this video, please click the like button and subscribe because it really does help the channel. I've made roasted pork belly many, many times over the years and I still find the air fryer is the best tool for the job. So that's what we're using today. I have placed my pork belly on a piece of foil. I'm going to wrap the pork belly, just the bottom part and the sides. I'm using a double piece of foil here because I find this foil really whippy. I used to get the heavy duty stuff from Costco but they don't sell it anymore. So this is what I stuck with. It doesn't have to be perfect. We just want to wrap it up like that. We wrap it like this to keep the juices in without drying out the outside of the pork and we want the top part to crisp up. So I've preheated my air fryer at 350 for about five minutes and we're going to stick it in there. I have a pretty big air fryer so I know this will fit in there but this fits in my smaller one too. Just make sure that your pork belly is going to fit in there. 350 for 25 minutes. That's it. Pretty easy right? Not quite but I'll see you in 25 minutes. Okay it's been 25 minutes. Let's see. Oh it's looking so good. Okay so there's a bunch of fat in the foil down there. I'm going to take this out. I'm going to put it on the cutting board. Okay and then we're going to take this and put it back in the air fryer for another five to eight minutes to get more bubbly on the top and cooked through more. Okay bumping the heat up to 400 and we'll check at five minutes and it's five to eight minutes so we'll just check. It's actually been 10 minutes. Oh my goodness guys it looks so good. Now we wait. We're going to let this rest for 20 minutes and that will ensure that the juiciness stays inside. Okay it has been 20 minutes and thankfully I had already scored the skin so it'll be easier to cut through. Oh my goodness look at how juicy this is guys. Look at that. Look how juicy that is. I have to say a lot of the barbecue places it's a hit and miss. You have to know where to go for the best roast pork. I also find just putting it on its side to cut into smaller pieces works well. I can't believe how juicy this is. Well I can because I've made this before but just compared to what we get in the barbecue places yeah sometimes it's not so juicy. At the barbecue shops I've seen the price as high as 20 bucks a pound for roasted pork belly but if you buy pork belly at the store when it goes on sale I've seen it as little as $5.89 a pound. So with a little bit of planning and really not a lot of effort you can have delicious roast pork belly at home. Are y'all ready for it? Oh yeah. Oh this piece is calling out to me. Yeah all right. Well close that at all. I mean you can go to the barbecue shop nothing wrong with that but if you can make it at home why not? Save the money and eat more of it. Had all the aromas with the air fryer going it was really nice. Even the cats are going crazy for the suyuk. Oh yeah nice rendering of the fat. Major crunch going on and the flavors. Oh so good guys so good. Another bite. Oh yeah so the bottom part where Flo has seasoned it it's nice and flavorful without being too salty so it's nice. So good. Make it at home guys. Awesome thanks dude. Minimal effort guys and maximum taste. Check out the recipe on my website flolam.com