Home-made Roasted Pork Belly a.k.a Siew Yuk (very non-halal)
During CNY, hubby's friend SZ had made his own home-made roasted pork belly with much success, and this prompted us to try the recipe out too. Even Loopymeals had quite a success on his first attempt, so we decided to give it a go! I had followed Happyhomemaker88's recipe, but halfed all the ingredients as we bought a 1 kilo pork belly instead (small oven ma).

Ingredients:
Marinade
1kg pork belly
1 cube fermented red bean cube (nam yee)
1 tps 5 spice powder (ng heong fun)
1 tps white pepper
1 tps salt
1 tps garlic (pounded)
1 tps sugar
1 tbps rice wine

Rubbing on pork belly skin
1 tbps salt
2 tbps rice vinegar

Our roasting method differs a little from Happyhomemaker88, as we have a counter top oven. So if you're attempting to roast your own pork belly, I guess it's advisable to observe the entire roasting process and adjust according, as every oven works differently.

Porky porky~~~!

Step 1: Make sure the pork belly you bought is thoroughly cleaned, and pluck out any hair you come cross. Ask your butcher to clean it for you.

Hot jacuzzi~~~!

Step 2: Blanch the pork in hot water for 3-5 minutes, to get rid of the musky smell.

Macam kuih lapis, tapi tak halal mia kuih~!

Step 3: Using a very sharp fork or clean nail, prick the surface of the pork skin. The more holes the better! There's actually a tool (see pic below) to help you prick the skin faster, but we didn't have it at that time, so we had to improvise. It's a pretty tiring process, but you have to be patient when pricking the skin will ensure the crispiness of the skin when roasting. Don't try to cheat!

Yat pek yeh~

Step 4: Prepare the marinade for the meat in a bowl. Mix it all up into a paste.

Pig arrr pig... marinate nicely haarrr~~~!

Step 5: Score the under side of the pork belly about 1cm in depth and 1.5 cm distance between each score. Rub the marinade onto the pork belly (give it a nice massage :D).


Step 6: Using a pastry brush, brush the rice vinegar onto the skin. Then brush the salt. Keep the meat in the fridge uncovered for several hours to marinate. Or you could marinate the meat overnight like we did. The dry condition in the fridge will dry the piece of meat nicely.

Pork belly roasting in the oven for about 5 minutes.

Step 7: Preheat the oven at 200­°C for about 20 minutes, using top and bottom heat. My timer was set at 40 minutes. Place the pork belly into the oven to roast for 20 minutes, skin side up. The aluminum foil is optional, as we didn't want to oil to splatter too much. I was observing the pork belly when hubby thought I had placed the pork a little too low from the top heating element. So I moved it one rack up, and switched to top heating only. It was then you could see the surface of the skin crackling non-stop, and you could hear the little popping sound too! We decided to leave the pork belly for another 5 minutes, before brushing a bit more rice vinegar to accelerate the cooking process on the skin. With the remaining time of 10 minutes, we left to pork belly to roast.

And this is the final result...


It sure does look like the real thing, doesn't it? Actually the top part of the skin would be charred during roasting, which is a normal process because it would indicate that the skin is roasted thoroughly. Just take a knife and scrape the charred parts off to reveal a nice orangy roasted pork skin. We took a bite and the texture was just heavenly! The skin was really crunchy, and the meat was flavourful (can't go wrong with the marination process really). I gave some to my neighbour and they gave the thumbs up! Since it's 1 kilo of siew yuk, it's quite a lot for both of us to eat, so we called a couple more neighbours to be our (willing) guinea pigs HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

We believe that the most crucial part of the entire process is pricking the pork skin. It's a tiring job pricking the skin really, but you have to prick as many holes as possible because I think that during the roasting process, as the vinegar gets heated up, it will cause the pork skin to sort of crackle and bubble up, making it crispy.

Thanks to Happyhomemaker88 and hubby's friend SZ for the recipe and also the tips. Now I really wish I have a self-cleaning oven, as the splatter from the pig skin left a bit of a mess to our oven XP