The Sunday Roast: Pork Belly

Are you ready to plan your sunday roast? This time I suggest a nice pork belly roast (if your macros allow for it 😉 ). Veggies roasting underneath a beautiful piece of meat, sucking up all those flavours … that’s a meal for kings. And a nice crackling, so crunchy that you hear someone eating it even when you are in another room. What you need for this? Just a little time and some humble ingredients!

Ingredients

• The biggest piece of pork belly that you are able to fit into your oven. If there are leftovers, you will have no troubles using them for something else. Leave the bones in, they give a lot of flavour.
• Onions and other root vegetables to generously cover the roasting tray, making a nice bed for your pork. You can also add pears, apples or quince if you like.
• At least one bulb of garlic. Don’t skimp on this, garlic is awesome!
• Aromatic herbs like rosemary, sage or bay. Use them generously.

Instructions

1. Preheat your oven to 250°C
2. Peel the onions. Cut all vegetables (and if you are using them, also your fruits) into large chunks and put them on your roasting tray.
3. Score the skin of the pork belly. Use a really sharp knive for this, otherwise you won’t have a good time!
4. Smash the herbs with pepper corns, salt and a little olive oil in a mortar. Smear the resulting pulp on all the meaty parts of the pork belly, sparing the scored skin.
5. Put the pork on your vegetable bed, skin side up. Salt the skin generously, this will help the crackling, and massage the salt into the pork. Be gentle 😉 ! If you want, you can sprinkle caraway and/or cumin seeds on the skin.
6. Add some liquid to your roasting pan. You can use water, stock or some apple vinegar. Be careful with sugary liquids like apple juice, they tend to turn black and burnt.
7. Put into the oven, turn on the ventilator and leave on high heat until a nice crackling forms. This will take about 40-60 minutes.
8. Turn off the ventilator and reduce the heat to 120°C. Let it slowly roast for about two hours or until you can pull out a bone easily.

Tadaaaa, it’s finished! Just make sure to let it rest at least 15 minutes before digging in. Your beauty should look somewhat like this now:

Do you have no idea how to fit this incredible roast into your macros? Fill out this application form and let me help you! After this, you can already go to your butcher and buy your pork belly 😀 .