Make this restaurant style roasted crispy pork belly in your home kitchen. Well seasoned, perfect crackling skin, and juicy tender texture are all addicted characteristics of this amazing pork belly with one secret cooking step.
Roasted crispy pork belly and roasted duck are the two most famous dishes in any Chinese restaurant. The myth about these two amazing food is they are hard to make. But this time you’ll bypass that myth with this detailed recipe.
Just a heads up, when it comes to Chinese roasted style food, it normally can’t be accomplished in short amount of time.
If any recipe claims that you can make this roasted crispy pork belly within an hour, well, don’t listen to them. There is no way you can make this become juicy and crackling in an hour.
With this detailed recipe and guidance, you no longer need to Google ‘crispy pork belly near me’ or ‘crispy pork belly delivery’ the next time you’re craving for one.
I’ve added an extra useful step to help you to get the crackling skin. Not many recipe calls for this extra one. Want to know what that is? Keep reading.
Pork belly
Pork belly is a primal cut of a pig which is located below the loin. This part of pig is very fatty with only streaks of lean meat.
It is the most flavorful and easy to cook compared to other primal cuts. That said, pork belly remains the most favorite meat cut in Asia.
Due to the fatty contain right underneath the skin, it’s tricky sometimes to achieve such crackling and crispy skin of a pork belly.
But nothing is impossible. All you need is to read the guide carefully and follow every single step included.
Prepping procedure
Here are the steps of prepping this roasted crispy pork belly:
- Clean and pat dry pork belly skin
- Then use a regular fork, meat tenderizer or BBQ fork to prick the skin
- Make sure to prick a lot of holes on the surface. These holes will aid to release moisture during cooking process which helps to make crispy skin.
- Avoid to pierce too deep into the fat part. Only prick the skin’s surface.
- Secret step
- In a cooking pot or large sautéed pan, add water and bring it to boil
- Add pork belly, skin side down, and blanch it for 5 minutes
- Check and prick more small holes if needed
- Here’s is your second chance of adding more holes on the skin
- Because the skin is softer now, it’s easy to break the skin if pricking too hard. So be careful
- The more holes are evenly added on the surface, the easiest the skin will become crispy
- Marinade
- Apply a thin layer of white vinegar on the skin’s surface
- Lightly add salt and five spice powder on all the sides, except the skin side, of the pork belly
- Let the pork belly marinade and dry in the fridge, uncover, skin side up for at least 12 hours or up to 24 hours
Cooking procedure
- Spread a thin layer of vinegar on top of the skin
- Spread a thin layer of salt evenly on the surface
- Make a wall of aluminum foil around the pork belly then roast at 350F for 45 minutes
- Put the pork belly at the middle rack in the oven
- This step is to dry the skin surface
- Take pork belly out. Scrape away the salt and discard it together with the foil
- Turn the heat to 370F and switch to grill or broil setting, then keep grilling for 15-20 minutes
- Put the pork belly at the second highest or highest rack in the oven
- Every oven is different, you can determine whether pork belly is done cooking by looking at the color of the skin: golden brown
- Remove pork belly from the oven. Let it cool down at room temperature for 10-15 minutes before proceed with slicing and serving
Essential ingredients and equipment
Ingredients: only 4 basic ingredients are called in this recipe; you may already have 3 out of 4 in your pantry
- Salt – I use Kosher salt for both steps: marinating and roasting. However, normally rock salt is called for when it comes to making crispy pork belly.
- You can use any kind of rock salt: regular one or coarse Himalayan pink rock salt.
- Five spice powder – this five spice powder is widely used in Chinese cuisine. This can be optional. If you don’t like the taste and smell if five spice powder, you can opt out for ground black pepper instead.
- White vinegar – vinegar helps to dry out the skin quickly. I always use Heinz vinegar for all the recipes that call for white vinegar.
- Chinese rice wine – use this rice wine to wash the pork belly to get rid of the smell and impurities. If rice wine is not available to you, regular vodka can be used as substitution.
Equipment:
- Fork – you can use regular fork to prick the skin of pork belly. Or if meat tenderizer or BBQ pork is available to you, it will be easier if you use it.
- Aluminum foil – to form a wall around pork belly during the first roast to contain the salt.
- Baking pan
Roasted Crispy Pork Belly
Equipment
- Meat tenderizer or fork
- Aluminum foil
- Baking pan
Ingredients
- 1 lb pork belly skin on
- ¼ c rice cooking wine
- 1 tbsp white vinegar
For marinating
- 1 tsp Kosher salt
- ¼ tsp five spice powder
For roasting
- 1 tsp Kosher salt OR
- 3 tbsp Himalayan rock salt
- 1 tbsp white vinegar
Instructions
Prepping
- Rub and clean pork belly with rice cooking wine then pat dry with paper towel.
- Use meat tenderizer or regular fork to prick the skin.
- Make sure to prick a lot of holes on the surface. These holes will aid to release moisture during cooking process which helps to make crispy skin.
- Avoid to pierce too deep into the fat part. Only prick the skin’s surface.
- In a cooking pot or large sautéed pan, add water and bring it to boil. Add pork belly, skin side down, and blanch it for 5 minutes.
- Take the pork belly out of hot boiling water and place it on a flat surface. Skin side up.
- Check and prick more small holes if needed. Here’s is your second chance of adding more holes on the skin. Because the skin is softer now, it’s easy to break the skin if pricking too hard. So be careful. The more holes are evenly added on the surface, the easiest the skin will become crispy.
- Apply a thin layer of white vinegar on the skin’s surface.
- Lightly add & dab salt and five spice powder on all the sides, except the skin side, of the pork belly.
- Let the pork belly marinade and dry in the fridge, uncover, skin side up for at least 12 hours or up to 24 hours.
Cooking
- Pre heat oven to 350F
- After 12 hours of marinating and drying out, take the pork belly out of the fridge.
- Spread a thin layer of vinegar then a layer of Kosher salt or rock salt on top of the skin.
- Use aluminum foil to make a wall around the pork belly and roast for 45 minutes. Rotate the pork belly when it's half way of the cooking process.
- The skin is not supposed to be puffy or crackling at this point. So don't be panic if you do not see anything happened with the skin.
- After 45 minutes, take pork belly out. Scrape away the salt and discard it together with the foil.
- Turn the heat to 370F and switch to grill or broil setting.
- Put the pork belly at the second highest or highest rack in the oven. This is when the skin starts puffing out.
- Then keep grilling for 15-20 minutes. Every oven is different, you can determine whether pork belly is done cooking by looking at the color of the skin: golden brown
- Remove pork belly from the oven. Let it cool down at room temperature for 10-15 minutes before proceed with slicing and serving.
Finally the recipe is out!!
Try it out and let me know how it turns out babe!
Yes!!! Success at last. Now, will it also work for duck breast?
Hi Malcolm,
So happy that you succeeded!!!! However, this method won’t work for duck because duck skin is thinier. If you want to try crispy duck, I have a roasted duck recipe on the blog. Though this version is not a crispy version, but you can still achieve it with the almost same method.
If you decide to go for it, just omit the the sauce stuffed inside the duck cavity, only green onion and ginger is needed. Then when it comes to roasting process, you only need to brush one time at the beginning with white vinegar (not multiple times like it calls for the version of juicy roasted duck).
Also, remember to start the oven at high temperature, then lower mid way finally raise the temp toward the last 5 mins of the process again for that crispy skin effect.
Hope this helps. I’ll have a crispy duck recipe on the blog soon :).
Do you think this would work with the Skin and some meat still attached from a pork shoulder?
It’ll work perfectly with pork shoulder thus there is less fat underneath the skin. In fact it is easier to achieve this crackling skin than the pork belly part because it requires less time to dry out the skin. Also, you might want to skip the boiling part if using shoulder. The negative side of pork shoulder cut is it may come out drier than this version. I use belly because I love my meat moist due to its extra fat :).