Adventures with Pork Belly

A few weeks ago, we started thinking about Christmas Eve. Actually, what we were going to make for Christmas Eve. Something festive and unique. Comforting, but non-traditional. We came up with pork belly. We both love pork belly. It's pretty much eating huge cubes of crisped, delicious bacon. So, with our dinner plans in mind we had some shopping to do. But first, we had to make the rounds at an Ugly Sweater Christmas party. I love this sweater, it has bedazzled Christmas kitties, a giant sparkly tree, and a rocking horse with a yarn mane. Fantastic!

 

My first attempt to hunt down the elusive slab of uncured pork belly went badly... VERY badly. We headed to Reading Terminal Market and stopped by a butcher stand that will remain nameless. I asked if they had any pork belly. The butcher looked at me a little funny, fished around in the case for a moment, then plopped a big frozen bags of something roughly the right size and shape down in front of me. He rang the frozen pile up and it only came to about $3.00. I was so excited as I had expected pork belly to cost a small fortune.

 

I took my prize home and prepared the curing mixture while the meat thawed. I jiggled the bag and the "pork belly" fell into my perfectly prepared roasting pan with a loud "splech." Instead of a beautiful, fatty, chunk of bacon, this is what I got:

 

A stomach. A pork maw. Menudo. I'm all up for trying unique foods and recipes, but when you want bacon, you want BACON. After taking some pictures, looking up a thousand menudo or stomach taco recipes, I gave up. The next day I headed to Chinatown and came home with a perfect pink slab of pork belly. I covered it entirely in my pickling/curing spice and shoved it in the fridge for 36 hours.

 

After curing for a day and a half, the meat was roasted at about 250 F for 3 hours with leeks, carrots, celery, onion, bay leaves and some chicken stock. Then, you compress the meat (I used old law school text books) in the fridge for another 36 hours. Finally, when you are ready to eat, crisp the skin and fat in a skillet.

 

We enjoyed our belly with a brandy cherry glaze, mashed potatoes and some coleslaw. Merry Christmas!