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Pork belly with chili crackling and apple sauce

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Roast pork belly with chili crackling, potato boulangere, apple sauce and butter-tossed carrots, green beans and radish

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Rate this recipe 2.9/5 (122 Votes)

Ingredients

  • Pork belly (scored)
  • Sea salt
  • Chili flakes
  • Olive oil
  • Floury potatoes
  • Onions
  • Garlic
  • Paprika
  • Sea salt
  • Black pepper
  • Rosemary
  • Vegetable stock
  • Two medium cooking apples (I like Bramleys)
  • 4 tablespoons sugar
  • 1/4 litre water
  • star anise
  • White pepper
  • Carrots
  • Green beans
  • Radish
  • Butter
  • Salt
  • Pepper

Details

servings 2
Level of difficulty Average
Preparation time 150mins
 Cooking time 150mins
 Cost Budget Friendly

Preparation

Step 1

If you've just rescued the frozen pork belly from the freezer like me, defrost and then treat the skin to a blow-dry with a hairdryer - quite seriously, moisture is the enemy of pork crackling, so the drier it is the better. Massage with sea salt, getting the salt into all the scores on the skin, cover with kitchen towel and leave for a couple of hours.

Step 2

I'm attributing the idea for this dish to a fab recipe book called POTATO that my friends Chris & Cathryn bought me for a birthday a couple of years ago when I found out I was gluten-intolerant. I think their words were something along the lines of "well, you can't exactly eat many other carbs now, can you..." It's actually saved my life (or my dinner) on several occasions. This isn't exactly their recipe but I definitely tried their version when I got the book, and it's migrated to this since.

Chop floury potatoes, onions and garlic all into thin slices. Layer up a dish with potatoes, onions and garlic, paprika, salt and pepper until you have three or four layers (depending on the deepness of your dish). Press down and pour hot vegetable stock until it's at the top of the potatoes, and finish with more paprika, salt, pepper, and some dried rosemary. If you've overfilled the dish like I always do, stick a baking try underneath to prevent a serious cleaning job on the bottom of your oven, and bake for 2 1/2 hours at 170c, or if it's a fairly large dish you might even need 3 or 4 hours - to be honest, the more the better, it really doesn't matter. The potatoes should be crispy on the top and the ones on the bottom should have absorbed most of the stock, and be really soft. I know this sounds really simple but I have never eaten potatoes that I love more.

Step 3

Pat the extra salt (and moisture that the salt has extracted) off the skin of the pork, and rub in more salt and a generous pinch of chili flakes. Oil and season the bottom of the belly, and pop on a roasting tray above a dish of water. Roast for 2 hours at 170c until the crackling is crispy. The water helps the belly meat not to dry out whilst the skin shrivels up into crackling heaven.

Step 4

Make an apple sauce - for 2 people, 1 very large or 2 small-ish chopped cooking apples (I like Bramleys) will do, with 3 or 4 tablespoons of sugar, a star anise, and 1/4 litre water. I like to season mine with white pepper, but it depends on how sweet you like your sauce - I should imagine that this is fairly unusual, but I like it with a bit of a kick.

Step 5

Steam some thinly chopped carrot slices and some green beans until almost cooked, then add finely sliced radish, toss in melted butter and season. I like the addition of radish to this, as it gives a little bite to the buttery carrots and beans.

Step 6

Serve!

​

Blow dry your pork belly
Season apple sauce with white pepper and paprika
The other half also commented that the apple sauce mound was bigger than the piece of meat. Look, I love apple sauce, alright? And no, I'm not American, so it's apple_space_sauce...!

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