Pork Belly for your Dork Belly

If you weren’t aware, pork belly is one of the most delicious things on the planet.

And, unless you slather it in bullshit, it’s also SUPER FUCKING KETO-FRIENDLY.

It’s like bacon’s fatter, more extravagant friend, the friend who takes you to the fanciest strip clubs and buys all your lapdances and cocaine, and I am fucking here for it.

So when I was in Costco the other day and saw a giant tray (giant because Costco, obvs) of pork belly, I snatched it up.

I initially wished I would have grabbed a slab of it instead of the sliced pieces, but I was able to work just fine with it in this form JUST fine, so…you know, good.

All you need to make a delicious, Asian-inspired and KETO-FRIENDLY mess of pork belly is the following:

Pork Belly (I had 4-5 pounds because OINK)

Pork-Belly-Strips — Not my picture. Why is that tomato there? Seriously…why.

Soy Sauce (About a cup)

Rice Wine Vinegar (Eh…a few shakes or so…probably about ¼ Cup)

Chinese Five Spice (About 1 Tablespoon)

Minced Garlic (3-5 gloves minced)

Some sort of Keto-friendly sweetener. I like this stuff. (about 1 Tablespoon)

Table Salt – just regular plain ol’ salt, you don’t even have to get the kosher stuff. Save that for something where it’s important to do so.

A baking dish large enough to fit all your pork belly in, fat side up, so the bottom portion is submerged in your marinade and the fat is safely above. A 9×13 casserole pan ended up being adequate for this amount of pig meat.

A roasting pan – preferably one with a rack so that the excess fat and juice will drip and go the fuck away from the meat. Why not give that stupid pan that comes with almost every fucking stove ever and gets left in old rentals a shot?

roasting pan — IT’S YOUR TIME TO SHINE, WEIRD ROASTING PAN.

An oven. Maybe not this one, but an oven none-the-less.

Instructions:

THE NIGHT BEFORE:

Place your strips o’ belly into the pan fat side up.
Make the marinade by mixing the rest of your ingredients MINUS THE SALT in a measuring cup or bowl or an old shoe, whatever you want. Wisk it til well blended.
Pour the marinade into the pan around the strips o’ belly. Move the belly around so that the fluid is pretty much chilling out around the bottom. If you don’t think enough of the meat is submerged, add a little water and move the dish around a bit to mix it up.
Put that dish UNCOVERED into the fridge and let it do it’s thang over night. You want the top of our pork belly to dry out a bit so it will get crispy tomorrow, so that’s why you need to leave it hangin in the wind.

THE NEXT DAY:

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F.
Remove your strips o’ belly from its overnight soak and place onto your weird roaster pan.
Take the table salt and cover the tops of your pork belly strips in a thick layer. Yes really. Big old spoonsful over the top of the pork belly, careful to only hit the top and not too much if any spilling over the side.
Bake until done, about 40 minutes give or take. You want the internal temp to be about 160 degrees. That said…before you do this or any other thing that involves roasting meat, I want you to go find $25-35 bucks and buy a probe thermometer like this. I think this was $34 on Amazon. It’s life changing. Just do it. No, ThermPro is not paying me to say this.
Once it’s done, remove from the oven.
Turn your oven up to a zillion, i.e. Broil.
With a knife or a pastry brush or a broom (whatever), sweep the salt off the top. Get rid of that nice salty crust you made. You’re done with it. Fuck off, salty crust.
Once your oven is as hot as the surface of the sun, place the pan back in the oven and, WATCHING IT SO YOU DON’T RUIN EVERYTHING, broil those fuckers until you have a nice bubbly, crispy top.
Once it’s sufficiently blasted, remove from the oven again.

There. You just made some wicked good pork belly. You can do what I did and plop a giant hunk on your plate with a couple duck eggs over easy and then realize that you’ve eaten your entire allotment of fat and calories for the day.