The closest chinese roast meat shop is 30 mins of driving away. To get our roast pork fix, we have to plan ahead and go on weekends.

There has to be a better way, I thought to myself. So I decided that I will make my own!

Ingredients:

• 2kg pork belly
• 3 tablespoon five spice powder
• 1 tablespoon white pepper
• 3 tablespoon shaoxhing wine
• 2 Tbsp white vinegar
• 1 cup salt (coarse or table, I used a mixture)

Method:

1. Wash and use paper towels to dry the pork belly.
2. Make some horizontal slits on the skin side of the pork.
3. Rub the meat side with wine, the five spice and white pepper powder.
4. Flip meat over and brush skin with some white vinegar.
5. Leave overnight to dry in fridge.
6. Preheat the oven to 350F/180c, arrange a pan on the bottom 1/3 of oven rack and fill with water. Line a roast pan with foil and place the pork belly on a rack that fits this pan.
7. Layer the top of the pork belly with the salt evenly.
8. Place the pork belly at the bottom 1/3 of the oven and bake for 1 hour.
9. Bake until the salt crust forms, the salt should be hardened. Check water in the pan below and add if needed.
10. Remove the pork belly from the oven, pull off the salt crust and discard.
11. Raise the heat of oven to 465f/240c, place the pork belly back in and roast for another 30 to 40 minutes till the crust is puffed, crackled and golden.
12. Remove from oven and let set for 10 minutes. Cut and serve immediately with some chilli sauce, mustard and hoisin sauce, or eat as is.

You should have left overs for lunch. What I really mean is you should make enough so that there are left overs, afterall you are going to have the oven on for an hour, so might as well make use of all that heat!

You can use the roasted pork belly in soup noodles, fried rice and stir fry dishes. I had them with some steamed baos for lunch the other day and they were soooo good. 😋