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A Crackling Good Quest — the low and slow five-spice edition

23 Oct 2024

Let’s cook a hunk of pork belly for three hours, two of them at a moderate heat, and another half hour at each end at a stomping 240°C. And let’s season it with Chinese five-spice.

One way of ensuring crunchy crackling on a pork roast is to start it in a furnace, slow it down for the greater part of the cook, and then ratchet up the heat again for the final haul. The first half hour gets the whole joint well on its way, the two slow hours get most of the rest of the job done, and the final 30 minutes of intense heat turns that layer of fat and skin into just the sort of crackling we like.

I chose Chinese five-spice this time around. This is a sweetly spicy blend of Szechuan peppercorns, fennel seeds, cinnamon, cloves and star anise, with other spices sometimes added. It’s an interesting mix and the spice cousins work very well together, although I sometimes find it a little too sweet for my liking.

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Our Crackling Good Quest series has had many iterations by now. One of my favourites is the soy, rosemary and orange edition. There’s an air fryer iteration, and even a braai edition.

Developing the flavour profile further, I also included fresh ginger and garlic, which combine, perhaps, to make the dish even more Chinese, in flavour if not in tradition.

Choose an oven dish into which the belly can fit quite snugly, but deep enough for only the top fat/skin edge to protrude above the lip of the vessel. This allows the juices to build while keeping things nice and tight.

Tony’s low and slow pork belly with Chinese five-spice

(Serves 4)

Ingredients

Butter for greasing the dish

1 large onion, thickly sliced

4 fat garlic cloves, sliced thinly

4cm piece of fresh ginger, peeled and sliced thinly

1 slab of pork belly

Chinese five-spice

200 ml decent quality chicken stock

Salt

Black pepper

Method

Preheat the oven to 240°C.

Grease a suitable oven dish with butter.

Lay out the sliced onion, garlic and ginger evenly over the base.

Season the pork belly on all sides with five-spice, salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Place it in the greased dish. Pour the stock down the side, stopping short about half way up the dish.

Roast for 30 minutes at 240°C.

Reduce the heat to 180°C and cook for 2 hours.

Ramp up the heat to 240°C for another 30 minutes or until you have perfect crackling.

Allow the joint to rest. Spoon off the fat from the cooking stock, pour it into a small saucepan and reduce it to a sauce to serve with the pork belly. DM

Tony Jackman is twice winner of the Galliova Food Writer of the year award, in 2021 and 2023.

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This dish is photographed on a plate by Mervyn Gers Ceramics.

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