"Get In My Belly" Belly

No, Fat Bastard from the movie "Austin Powers" did not make an appearance in our kitchen this weekend, but some tasty pork belly did!

Pork Belly is currently a trendy food, served in restaurants from all walks of life-food trucks, hip taco bars, and 3 star restaurants.  In and of it's self, it's a beautiful and versatile food due to its cheap price ($1.99/lb), it's ease to work with, and the variety of things you can do to it (braise it, confit it, cure it for bacon).

We started our pork belly per Thomas Keller's recipe for Braised Pork Belly by first making a pork brine consisting of a 1/4 cup of honey, 12 bay leaves, 1/2 a bunch of thyme and parsley each, 1/2 cup of smashed garlic cloves (skin intact), 2 T. of whole black peppercorns, 1 cup of Diamond Crystal kosher salt, and 8 cups of water.  We combined all the ingredients in a big pot, brought the liquid to a boil for one minute, stirred until all the ingredients were combined, and took it off the heat to cool.

After the brine cooled, facilitated in part by a trip to our freezer, we placed our pork belly in a large pan and submerged it in broth to brine for 10 hours-the recommended brining time by TK (due to oversleeping, our's brined for 11 hours, but we did not get an overly salty product-a potential factor of brining more than 10 hours).

After removing our belly from the brine, it got a quick rinse before heading into our cast iron skillet, fat side down.  Over medium-high heat we rendered some of the fat out of the meat for 15 minutes.  We then took out the belly, poured off the fat in the pan, returned the belly to the skillet, and covered it half-way up the belly with beef stock.  The recipe calls to cover the pork belly with parchment paper cut with a hole in the middle (instructions listed in the book).  After a couple of tries, Drew was able to come up with a successful product.

The pork belly now covered, went into a 325 degree oven for 2.5 hours and when it came out, the outside was crispy and brown, but the inside was fork tender.

A last minute thought on buying pork belly-when you buy it, ask the butcher to remove the skin, if not already done.  We lost a lot of meat & time removing the skin on our own, and I'm sure in the hands of a true butcher, your experience will be even better!