Roasted Pork Belly with Asian Slaw

I cooked the following roasted pork belly as a "ban-chan", Korean small dishes accompanied with cooked rice. However, you can serve it as a family-style dish, along with pasta or pilaf with some vegetable dishes.

Once you cure the pork belly for six hours, just pop the pork belly into your oven. Really simple, easy and delicious pork belly is ready in an hour.


Roasted Pork Belly with Asian Slaw

(Yield: family style (5-6 servings) / Cooking time: 1 hour*)
* One hour does not include 6-hour curing time.

Ingredients:
+ 2 pounds pork belly
+ 3/8 cup (3oz in your measuring cup) light brown sugar
+ 3/8 cup (3oz in your measuring cup) kosher salt

+ 3-4 stems of scallion (white and pale green part)
+ 1-2 radish
+ 1/2 carrot


+ 1 lemon, 2 Tbsp of lemon juice only
+ 1 Tbsp rice wine vinegar
+ 1/8 tsp sesame oil
+ 3 Tbsp oil (any neutral oil, e.g. grape seed oil or canola oil)
+ salt and pepper


Procedures:
1. Measure light brown sugar and salt and mix well. This is your curing mix.





2. Prepare a Ziploc bag and the curing mix and pork belly.


3. Coat the pork belly with curing mix well and place in the plastic bag. Pour all the remaining curing mix to the bag and make sure the mix is spread throughout the bag so that the pork belly is cured evenly.


4. Put the pork belly in plastic bag in a refrigerator for six hours.

5. Preheat your oven to 320°F (~160°C). Take the pork belly out and wash out all the curing mix under running water. Pat dry the pork belly with paper towel. I also removed the pork skin which becomes really hard after the curing. Place the pork belly over baking sheet pan and wired rack so that the melting fat from pork belly can drip easily and make the meat crispy.


6. Place the baking sheet pan to the lowest oven rack.


7. Roast about 50-60 minutes and check if the pork is cooked. If not, let the pork stay in the oven 10 more minutes and check again until it is cooked. Take the port belly out and rest in for 15 minutes.


8. While the pork belly is resting, make the Asian slaw.


- Carrots and radish: Julienne


- Scallions: Julienne in long form, and deep in ice water. Ice water will remove the slimy liquid from scallion and also make the julienne curly. Drain and pat dry with paper towel.




9. Make vinaigrette by mixing 2 Tbsp lemon juice, 1 Tbsp rice wine vinegar, 1/8 tsp sesame oil, 3 Tbsp neutral oil and salt & pepper. This is very acidic vinaigrette which goes well with pork belly.

10. Toss carrot, radish and scallion juliennes with vinaigrette.

11. Slice the roasted pork belly with very sharp slicing knife and arrange in a plate with Asian slaw.


Enjoy~