Crispy Pork Belly served with Nectarine and Wine Sauce and a Charred Nectarines
Irresistibly crispy pork belly
Pork belly dishes have always been my favourite to cook. I have smoked pork belly, oven baked, braised, pressure potted and put it in the Weber. But ultimately I have found the best pork belly is done in an oven where consistency and accurate temperature control can be kept. The biggest challenge with cooking pork belly is that we all want the crunch and rendered fat on the top and a succulent pork beneath. This can sometimes be trickier than we often realise to perfect but after tons of trials I formulated my favourite recipe for pork belly.
Top Tips for a Crispy Pork Belly:
Get Good Quality Meat
A great pork belly starts with the quality of the meat! Find a good butcher and choose your pork belly wisely. You should check the pork belly for an even fat and flesh layer in terms of thickness, where possible.
Avoid vacuum sealed Pork Belly
The blood from the meat will make it that much more challenging to work with that beautiful crackling. Ask your butcher to freshly cut your belly from the counter.
Don’t Score the Fat
The steam from the meat passes through the scoring making it a real challenge to crisp up and get that beautiful puffy crackling.
The Key to Great Crackling
Unwrap the pork belly and leave it on a plate or in a braai tin overnight to dry out. The dry environment of the fridge will give your crackling an extra boost.
How to Cook the Pork Belly
Ensure that you cook your belly with the top being level. This will ensure you have an even crackling and not puffed on one side and flat on the other. Use tin foil to prop up the underneath that is thinner than other sections. Make a tinfoil basket covering the sides of the flesh as much as possible to expose this as little as possible to the direct oven air while cooking.
Ingredients to make a Crispy Pork Belly with a Nectarine and Wine Sauce
1.2kg-1.5kg pork Belly
Maldon Smokey salt
250g nectarines for the sauce
100g nectarines for garnish
1 cup of chenin blanc
1 tbsp of brown sugar
1 tsp of nutmeg
1 tsp of cinnamon
2 tbsp olive oil
How to Prepare the Pork Belly
Refrigerate overnight open with cling wrap around the flesh part of the meat.
Preheat oven to 140deg(120deg fan oven)
Generously salt the pork with maldon salt and cracked black pepper.
Use tinfoil to prop the pork belly up ensuring the top of the fat is level.
Cover the flesh of the pork belly with tinfoil making a parcel but ensuring the fat is all exposed and cook for 2.5 hours.
Turn up the oven and then cook for 20 minutes at 250 degrees Celsius (or 220 degrees Celsius if using a fan oven).
How to Prepare the Nectarine and Wine Sauce
Slice the nectarines into 1/2 cm slices
Add olive oil and bring a pan up to a medium heat.
Add the nectarines, wine, sugar, nutmeg and cinnamon to the pan and leave to simmer until a syrup-like mixture has formed.
Plating the Dish
Cover the serving platter with a generous amount of the nectarine and wine sauce.
Cut the pork belly into 10cm by 10cm cubes.
Place the pork belly cubes onto the sauce.
Finally, add fresh slices of nectarine.
Enjoy! Please tag me on Instagram if you’ve made this recipe, I’d love to see it!
This recipe first appeared on Juicy Delicious.
More Pork Recipes
To sign up for updates, enter your details below. The newsletter is sent out infrequently, and contains new recipes, updates about events and other news. Below the newsletter block, you will find some more pork recipes.
If you enjoy pork, or why not make your own Bacon Jam?
At Christmas time, Pick n Pay sells festive edition Gammon Sausages, which work fantastically in this Gammon Sausage Bake with Apples, Tomatoes and Coriander. And if you have any leftover gammon post Christmas, these Gammon Braai Broodjies with a zesty Fennel and Mustard Slaw, Boerenkaas Cheese on Garlic and Herb Rolls are easy to prepare, and absolutely delicious!
Cooking with pork ribs, is another favourite of mine. I cooked the Rib, Slaw and Smokey Mayo Garlic Rolls on the Expresso Morning Show and they are so good I must try them again soon! And then there is this similar, but slightly different recipe made with pork rashers instead of ribs and served with a Yoghurt and Mayo Coleslaw mix is another favourite.
If it’s subtle pork flavours you’re looking for, try the Beetroot Salad with Whipped Feta, Bacon, Roasted Olives and Toasted Pecan Nuts.
About Shawn Godfrey
Photo credit: Niki M Photography
Shawn Godfrey is an entrepreneur based in Cape Town, South Africa. After the Covid-19 lockdown saw his business in financial distress, cooking was the creative outlet that helped to keep him sane. To keep track of his recipes, and encourage friends and families to join him, he starts his instagram account The Roasted Dad.
Fast-forward to late 2021 - on a whim Shawn (encouraged by his wife Lianne) enters MasterChef South Africa. It is a crazy time of life: running a 200 people business and struggling to keep it profitable, two small children with a third on the way, and about to move into a new house. But when Shawn gets selected to be one of the 20 contestants participating in the fourth season of MasterChef South Africa, he decides to go all in. Leaving his 7-month-pregnant wife to look after their then three and one-year-old children, he battles it out and comes back home five weeks later with the trophy and a million rand prize money in his pocket.
It all started with an Instagram account, but The Roasted Dad is so much more now. Shawn has stayed his entrepreneurial self and whilst he hosts Private Dinner Parties and Cook-with-Me Demos, does Restaurant Take-Overs, he still runs the lighting company and several other businesses.
On his blog, Shawn shares Restaurant Reviews and Accommodation Reviews, and gives an insight into the wild and wonderful life he leads together with his wife Lianne, and their three children Aiden (6), Olivia (4) and Harvey (2).
Sign up to the newsletter below to be kept up to date with events, new recipes and reviews, or contact Shawn to chat about recipe creation, restaurant takeovers and public speaking events.