Easy-peasy pork belly slices

If you’ve read majority of my posts and know me in person then you will know that I have a somewhat tender, mouth-drooling soft spot for pork belly.

I love shoving a whole belly (not my own) into the oven and leaving it to slowly roast for hours on end.  While I can’t really stomach rich food this is my most favourite treat.

Before I had even stepped off the plane from London I was already requesting a braai (bbq) so that we could have rashers (which in SA, is thinly sliced pork belly that crisp up a treat on the fire).  Once I had gobbled those up I was no sooner requesting a slow-roasted pork belly.

A few weeks ago, my boxes from the UK arrived and in one of them was my copy of “Nigellissima” which I got when THIS HAPPENED.  Yup! Browsing through it the other day, I eyed out the recipe for Pork Belly slices with Chilli & Fennel Seeds and totally got inspired to do my own version as I am not a great lover of fennel.

Our local supermarket sells thickly sliced rashers that were perfect for this recipe.  We couldn’t be bothered to go to our local butcher etc etc etc.  But you could go down to your butcher and get him to slice up some pork belly for you.

So here’s what you do…

Sam’s Crispy Pork Belly Slices 

10-12 thickly sliced pork belly (rashers) —> 1cm-1.5cm thick

60ml olive oil

1 tsp smoked paprika

1.5 tsp chicken spice (available in SA supermarkets, not so sure about UK! Sorry)

1 tsp garlic salt

1 tsp dried herbs (don’t use fresh as they will burn)

1/2tsp chilli flakes

2 TBsp red wine

Method:

Preheat the oven to 180.  Mix all the ingredients together and dip both sides of the pork belly slices into the marinade.  Place in a deep roasting tray making sure that each piece overlaps leaving the rind at the uppermost edge.  Nigella refers to this layout as “fallen dominoes”, if that makes more sense.

Cook for about 1.5 – 2 hours, cranking up the oven to 200 in the last 30 minutes to ensure some crispy rind for you!

Serve with baked potatoes/mash/apple & fennel salad/normal green salad/whatever you please 🙂

Enjoy – I was too busy enjoying that I didn’t take a photo.  Yip, fail! They were scrummy though…