Pork Belly, Is it Healthy and How to Cook With It? page

[CaveGirl]

Ok, so my most recent trip to my farmer's market in NYC and I got some pastured eggs, 6lb pastured chicken and pastured pork belly.


I know pork belly is mostly fat (with some meat and skin...it reminds me so much of making chicarrones!)

The belly I have is about a pound and a half and I don't know what the heck to do with it?!


I'm looking for simple ways that aren't very fussy in how to cook it so its tasty (all that beautiful fat on it, I doubt it would be hard not to make it taste great though )


How do you cook pork belly?

[Clint]

Paging Tarlach!


He'd be able to give you all the info you'd need on cooking pork belly!

[Dollface]

Yes I think it's healthy and soo filling. We have it every sunday night in winter without fail. I just leave it plain and don't add any liquid it will make it's own, put it in a covered dish and bake on 300F for 3 hours then remove and leave to rest while you grill the crackling. Oh it's soo good

[Tarlach]

Haha Clint


Pork belly is great stuff.


As Dollface says, you can just throw it in a pan and roast it as is.


We slice it into say 1/4" strips (like fat bacon) and then cook it on the BBQ plate with a bit of lard. You can get it nice and brown and even get the skin to crackle up (like on roast pork) if you stand it up on the skin with enough heat.

It's a bit of a fine art to cooking it well, but it's awesome.


If you have a good slab of belly then you can always roll it into a roast. Trim the skin back a bit and roll the lot into a big log with the skin on the outside. Tie it up with some cooking string. You can even put herbs on the inside to add more flavor.

Then just treat it like a pork roast and do it in the oven or whatever. There is a LOT of fat in pork belly, so you may wish to cook it quite well to get the fat inside to break down a bit.


I loved the belly roast we had last, but my wife thought it was a bit fatty.