Cooking Lesson #120 Roasted Pork Belly Roll

Roasted Pork Belly

How you doin’? Three of my favorite pork roast recipes are carnitas, kalua pork and pork belly. The best pork belly I ever tasted—until now—was at Tom Colicchio’s Craft Restaurant in Century City, where the meat is unctuously delicious and the skin is so snappy crisp.

I saw rolled pork belly roasts in the display case at Huntington Meats at the Los Angeles Original Farmer’s Market last week. I didn’t really know how I was going to cook it, but I did know I wanted to duplicate that Colicchio pork belly taste and texture.
 
I found some recipes for Lechon Roll slow roasted in the oven with super crispy skin and super moist meat. So, I knew I didn’t have to order a whole pig cooked in an imu pit to get my kalua pork and I didn’t have to boil a pork roast in lard and Coca Cola to make it moist like carnitas. I decided that none of the recipes I researched were going to give me exactly what I wanted so I went off on my own and created my own rolled pork belly roll roast recipe.
 
I always try to provide somewhat decent pictures of my finished work at its best, but in this case, I didn’t have a chance. It smelled so good, it was dinner time and I had hungry people waiting to, so what you see is that all that was left—an end piece and lots of string. I know you would understand. 
 
Prep time:  15 minutes
Roast time:  4 hours
Chill time:  24 to 48 hours
Crisp time:  30 to 45 minutes
 
Ingredients
1 (4 to 5 pounds) tied whole pork belly, skin-on without ribs
2 tablespoons kosher salt
1 tablespoon freshly-ground black pepper
1 tablespoon sweet paprika
1 tablespoon garlic powder
 
Instructions

1. Preheat an oven to 450⁰ F.
2. Using paper towels, pat down surfaces of meat to completely dry.
3. With a small knife, poke the surface of the skin all over without piercing the meat.
4. Rub the seasonings all over the rolled roast.
5. Place the rolled pork belly on a sheet of parchment paper and roll up the roast in the paper.
   
6. Then roll-up the paper-wrapped roast in 2 sheets of heavy-duty aluminum foil and tightly seal on the bottom and side edges.
   
7. Begin to roast in the 450⁰ F. preheated oven and then immediately turn down the temperature down to 250⁰F to roast for 4 hours.
   
8.  Remove the rolled roast from the oven and let it counter cool for a couple of hours and then place it into the refrigerator for 24 to 48 hours.
9. An hour before final cooking, take the roast out of the refrigerator, unwrap and place on a foiled-wrapped sheet pan.
10. Preheat the oven broiler to medium.
11. Place the roast under the broiler and allow the skin to crisp and blister while it heats the center of the roast; 30 to 45 minutes or until skin is very crisp.
12. Remove from oven and let the roast rest for about 10 to 15 minutes before slicing.

ChefSecret:  By triple wrapping the roast it allows the meat to roast until very tender, while the skin and fat are rendering free of most fat.

Covid-19 Quip of the Day: “The government doctors said, ‘a mask and gloves were enough to go to the supermarket.’ They lied; can you imagine how embarrassed I was when everyone else was wearing clothes?”
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