Sticky Crispy Pork Belly

Pork belly is one of the most underrated cuts of meat. It’s cheap. It’s versatile. And it’s super tasty. What’s not to love? When cooked right, pork belly is INSANE! And in my opinion, this is one of the best ways to cook it. I serve it with egg fried rice and stir fried greens, but we’ve also had it in bao buns and with noodles. I might be bias, but this is brilliant.

This one needs a little bit of love and time – but honestly it’s worth it! Once you’ve bought all the ingredients for the sauce you’re good to go again, and again and again. And I assure you, you’ll be back for seconds.

Ingredients:

500g pork belly strips

3 cloves of garlic

2 inches of ginger (peeled)

5 spring onions

1 red chilli

1 tbsp sesame oil

2 tbsp light soy sauce

1 tbsp brown sugar

1 tsp fish sauce

1 tsp rice vinegar

1 tsp Chinese five spice

1 tbsp oyster sauce

1 tsp of sesame seeds

Method:

1. Start by slicing the pork into 1 inch chunks. Crush the garlic cloves with a knife and add to a pan of boiling water, roughly chop the ginger and two spring onions into large chunks and also add in, along with the chilli, whole. Once boiling, add in the pork and leave to poach for 10 minutes.
2. Drain the pork, keeping the poaching liquid, ginger, garlic, spring onions and chilli and set aside. Leave the pork for a few minutes to dry whilst heating up some oil in a pan (go easy on the oil, the pork will release fat as it cooks and using too much will give your sauce an oily layer later on).
3. Fry the pork chunks until crispy all over – at this stage, you want to render down all the fat. Keep turning the pork to ensure all of it goes crispy! Be careful at this stage – it’ll splatter a LOT.
4. Once crispy turn down the heat slightly, add in the sugar and stir through ensuring it coats all the pork and leave to caramelise for a couple of minutes
5. Mix together the soy sauce, fish sauce, oyster sauce, rice vinegar, five spice & sesame oil and then add to the pork. Add back in the chilli, garlic, ginger and spring onions and ladle in 1-2 spoons of the poaching liquid. The pork needs to be just covered.
6. Leave to simmer for 1 1/2 – 2 hours, until reduced
7. When almost ready – remove the chilli, garlic, spring onion and ginger and slice up the remaining spring onion – add half in now
8. When ready, serve topped with spring onion and sesame seeds!