Danny’s slow roast belly of pork to die for recipe
Posted by Fiona Nevile in Pork Ham Bacon Sausages | 143 comments
Joint of pork belly with skin side down ready for slow roast
We have Sunday Lunch in the evening and Danny usually cooks it. If I have the day off, I can spend hours in the garden and totter in at dusk to a great meal. Perfect.
Last week he cooked the best pork that I have ever tasted. I had bought belly of pork from Fred Fitzpatrick on a whim.
Danny was polite and definitely suspicious when I showed him the thin joint. Belly of pork is a slim, boy racer sort of cut. A rib of small bones and meat that appears to be stingy. Wrong. BOP has loads of meat.
I was working last weekend and arrived home to tantalising smells drifting from the oven.
“I found a great recipe. But didn’t have the ingredients so made up my own and experimented with a new method,” D explained, as he sliced the delicious meat.
The pork had a deep, mellow flavour and the crackling was truly superb. The skin and fat both took starring roles. Proper crackling underpinned by a sparkling melt in the mouth layer beneath. I was not eating ‘fat’ but gently roasted, bite sized pieces of heaven that had transmogrified in the long slow cooking process into something with texture and flavour. I would kill for a decent pork scratching. Danny’s home made version impressed me and after the first forkful of meat I reeled with applause and, I hate to admit it, envy.
Edit Oct 2015: Getting the crackling good and crispy can be a hit and miss affair. Every oven is different. See Sue’s comment below. If it’s rubbery, you can pop it under a low grill for 5 minutes or more but be careful not to let it blacken and burn. I guess it’s best to play safe and score it, and rub on salt and oil in the traditional manner.
Do also consider serving this perfect Yorkshire pudding recipe with this or any roast.
| Danny’s slow roast belly of pork to die for recipe |
- I kilo joint of belly of pork
- 10 leaves off a sprig of rosemary
- 3 small cloves of garlic sliced
- Foil big enough to form a nest under and around the joint
- Place the pork, crackling side down, in roasting pan. Distribute the rosemary and garlic evenly over the base of the belly. Take the foil and press it over the belly to make sure that the herbs will not shift.
- Turn the whole lot over, crackling side up, and form the foil into a snug nest around the joint, leaving the crackling exposed and ensuring that the fat from the crackling will drip into the foil nest.
- Roast at 140c (fan) for 3 hours and then turn down to 130c for another hour (4 hours!) – these are our fan-assisted oven temperatures so you may wish to adjust for a conventional oven, but not by much I think. Maybe +10% maximum.
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Wow, I found this Recipe by accident, but wow what a delicious smell coming from my oven right now!
I got up at 6am to put the meat in, prepared it and all the veg the night before, all i have to do is breeze along ready to serve up at one.
Should be a nice surprise for my mum.
Anne – Aga run courses for people new to cooking on an Aga. My mum went on one and there is nothing she can’t cook on her Aga.
Hi Anne
The Aga website has equivalent cooking times for converting ordinary oven temperatures to Aga temperatures.
I’m sorry but we don’t have an Aga so I can’t help.
Hi I have just moved to house with 2 oven aga how would I cook the slow roast belly pok? How long in top oven and how long in simmering oven also would I cover or not. Recipie sounds devine but I am still nervous cooking in Aga, need reassuring!!
Ive been cooking BOP since I googled your website in October 2008. I just wanted you to know that my whole family drool over this when I cook it on a Sunday.There is never any left over. I have a fan assisted oven and I cook at 140 for 2 hrs and then 150 for an hour. I then put under the grill for 7 mins for perfect crackling!! I cook a 1kg joint and this feeds two adults, our teenager daughter(who is first at the table for BOP) and two hungry 4 and 3yr old boys. Perfect thankyou Danny
I bought a rolled joint today, gonna try this method tomorrow. Will be serving it with braised red cabbage and apples braised in cider and brown sugar.
*fingers crossed*
Hi Mandy
I have no idea as we don’t have an AGA. Perhaps you could Google equivalent cooking times for AGA. I think that the AGA site may have a section on this.
I want to cook this recipe in aga any suggestion so the crackling is good and times
thanks
WOW! reading al these comments and succulent recipes had me dribbling over me keyboard!
I have only just mastered the art of cooking a joint and crispy roast tats, cooked a duck over xmas – turned out absolutey brilliant, the last two I cooked turned out like boot leather.By now I had slung out me electric cooker and got a gas one – BIG difference!
I was particularily interested in the BOP recipe as I have just bought me first one and was trawling around looking for recipes. will cook it for new year, will report back on how I cooked it and how it turned out
Love the site
You may be interested in the times and temperatures I found in a Christmas Prezzie recipe book – Ottolenghi the cookbok. This suggests annointing the undrside with herbs whizzed with olive oil, then cooking for one hour at 250C, adding a bottle (!) of wine and cooking a further hour at 170, then finally a third hour at 110. I reckon the foil nest idea would keep the meat moist enugh without the addition of a bottle of wine (my scottish ancestry rebels at the idea – wine is much better in my glass).
Anyway, I have a 1KG joint in the oven as we speak, I have decided to cut the time by one quarter for each stage, as the original times given are for a 2KG bone-in joint, adopt the nest idea but also to share some of my white wine with it as mysteriously there seems to be a bottle open. I’ll report back if all goes well.