We love belly pork in our house. Its a cheap cut and when roasted in the oven for a couple of hours, tastes like heaven. I don’t even mind when you get the chewy bits, it’s part of it’s charm in my mind. Its my staple choice whenever I see it on the menu in restaurants but when I cook it at home, I fall into the trap of doing the usual – pork, roasties, peas, carrots, gravy etc.. so this weekend I had free time and decided to do push myself and do something a bit different.
Ingredients:
- 1kg pork belly (any weight of belly pork can be used for this recipe but adjust cooking time accordingly)
- 2 tbsp Dukkah spice rub mixed with olive oil to form a paste.
Method:
- Preheat the oven to 220C/425F/Gas Mark 7.
- Put the pork in a roasting tin and rub the skin dry with kitchen towel before scoring it.
- Sprinkle salt over the skin and roast for half an hour.
- Turn oven down 180C/ 250F/ Gas Mark 4 and cook for an 1 hour.
- Take out and rub the spice mix all over the skin and in the score marks.
- Cook for a further 30 minutes then remove from the oven and stand for 5 minutes before carving.
I served this with oven roasted veg (red onion, mushrooms, aubergine tossed in olive oil, seasoning and a couple of garlic cloves still in their skins) and bulgar wheat, sprinkled with fresh parsley. A fantastic take on roast belly pork!
My Sunday night experiment – result 10/10!!