Pork Belly with Szechuan Pepper & Garlic Recipe

Crispy Roast Pork Belly with Szechuan Pepper & Garlic

As the weather turns colder and the smells of BBQ & al fresco eating become rarer, it's good to be able to cook something inside that will make the whole house smell delicious. Crispy roast pork belly not only smells amazing but it has the most unbelievable flavour. Getting the lovely crispy skin is not difficult at all, if you follow this easy recipe. Firstly, put your oven to heat up to its highest possible temperature, whilst preparing the dry crushed Szechuan pepper and garlic marinade.

Crispy Roast Pork Belly Dry Marinade

Roughly crushing in a pestle and mortar:

1. Salt

2. Szechuan Pepper
3. 
Garlic
4. 
Pinch of Chinese Five Spice

Once you have roughly crushed the ingredients, take your pork belly out of the fridge and score the skin with a sharp knife. Try not to cut too deeply into the layer of fat if possible (and if it’s easier, get your butcher to score the pork belly for you). To maximise the visual impact of your crispy roast pork belly, try to score the skin in a criss-cross pattern

Cooking The Dry Marinaded Crispy Roast Pork Belly

Rub the dry szechuan pepper and garlic marinade into the pork belly and leave to marinade for a 15 minutes or so, while your oven reaches its maximum temperature. Once the oven has reached 230 degree+, put the marinaded pork belly into the oven and roast for 30 minutes. This initial hot roasting period will help to ensure a super crispy skin. After the 30 minutes of roasting, reduce the temperature of the oven down to 170 degrees and roast for a further 2 hrs. Every hour, baste the roasting pork belly in the fat collecting in the bottom of the roasting dish. After 2 hrs, remove the crispy roasted pork belly and rest for 10 minutes or so.

If you want to do something special, place a clean, flat plate on top of the pork, weigh down with juice brick or similar item and place in fridge to cool overnight. When you want to serve the pork belly, slice into square blocks while cold and reheat in oven for 15 minutes with 3 minutes under a hot grill to crisp the skin again … it will look amazing!