Thursday 27 August 2015

Confit Pork Belly

I enjoy roasted pork belly and wanted to go further with a confit pork belly.
The recipe I selected is from here (Angry food blog from Lady and pups). She leaves the pork in the brine for 6 hours in the fridge, then confit it for 4 hours in the oven, press it overnight and finally roast the skin on fire. Here it is:

The brine contains salt, pepper, honey, star anise and water. 

I left the pork in for 6 hours however would try shorter next time (maybe 2-3 hours) as the end product was too salty for me.

After the brine it's fat bath (mix of sunflower and olive oils for me).
Looks like a bit like a preserved organ for anatomy...

After 5 hours of confit, the meat is soft and detach itself...
Looks good, but the house smells like a fast-food.

Then it's pressing down overnight to reattach the fibers together and give it a shape.
I used two ovenware that fit one inside the other and cans for weight.

The following day, the meat look nice but the skin is gelatinous : time to get it crackling!

She suggested grilling on the pan but it sticks a lot so next time I will try 250°C in the oven instead.

In the end this took lots of time (over 26 hours!) and I did not enjoy it as much as I was expecting... We actually preferred the usual roasted pork belly.

Thursday 6 August 2015

Moleskine page 78

Not surprisingly, I ran out of yellow Posca for the background of this page...