1st crack at pork belly

Canugghead

Never tried pork belly in 10 years of egging, better late than never I guess 

No slashing, no vinegar, no soda. Punctured skin with Thermapen, seasoned meat side with Shaoxing, salt, white pepper and five spice powder. Rested overnight naked skin side up.

Smoked at 325'ish raised indirect on top of AR, meat side down, skin covered with just coarse sea salt held in place with foil fence. Reached IT 165 in about 1.5 hr. Removed stone and drip pan, cleared skin of salt crust and flipped over to blister the skin.  By this time dome temp was in the 400-450 range, didn't take long to crisp up the skin. The edge took longer to blister than the middle, have to figure out how to keep the entire skin surface in contact with the salt next time. Got decent smoke ring and crunchy cracklin that was more satisfying than the juicy morsels! Thanks for looking.

510BG

Congrats amazing. What's the salt for? 

Canugghead

Thanks!  I believe the salt is to draw out the moisture, thereby allowing the skin to blister into cracklin.  It didn't taste too salty at all, I suspect fine table salt would have been too salty.

510BG

I'm tempted to try this in the near future. Any resting time?

Canugghead

No resting, although I wondered if it can be smoked ahead of time and chilled, then broiled/grilled to build the cracklin when needed.

caliking

That looks amazing, Gary!

i have wanted to try making siew yoke after first reading about it several years ago. 

https://www.saveur.com/article/Kitchen/Roast-Pork-Rules-Siew-Yoke

Tried it once or twice, skipping the steps mentioned in that article , despite which I was still surprised that it didn’t turn out quite crackly and crispy

I plan to try your method some time. Sounds like it is far less tedious, but just as tasty. 

Canugghead

Thanks Ashish, I was pleasantly surprised with the result to be honest.

That's a great article, some good tips that I want to try for sure ... adding red bean curd to the marinade (I was more concerned with getting decent cracklin than seasoning)... scraping off the charred blisters just like how we made toast on stove top back home (I had to rotate to get the edges puff up without burning the already puffed centre) ... better to blister skin in intense heat (turned out that my temp spike to 400-450 was an unplanned good thing. I'm also thinking pizza oven may be great for that finishing touch!). Thanks for sharing.

westernbbq

I was going to say first crack at pork butt....oh...nevermind

Canugghead

westernbbq said:

I was going to say first crack at pork butt....oh...nevermind

haha... actually I never ate a pulled pork sandwich before smoking my first butt, go figure