so artsy what's up you guys it's susie from heygrillhey.com and today
we are throwing down a beautiful slab of smoked pork belly tender
sumptuous melts in your mouth you guys are gonna love this one and it's done in
about eight and a half hours so it's a perfect same day cook let's do it
i absolutely love this recipe because it's all the best things about barbecue but it's only four
ingredients it's super simple only a couple steps to get done and it tastes phenomenal
here's what you'll need you want a four to five pound slab of uncured pork belly this can be a
little bit difficult to find but most butchers can get you uncured pork belly i actually find
mine at costco most often and for this particular application you do want it to be skin off we're
not gonna like cook or crackle the skin this is all like melt in your mouth pork belly so skin
removed is ideal for this particular application and again this isn't bacon it's not cured
just raw straight beautiful fatty pork belly i love it you'll also need a few tablespoons
of your favorite barbecue seasoning i'm using my sweet rub it has all of the flavors of that
classic barbecue goodness that i love and a little bit of brown sugar so we'll get a
nice crust on the outside you're also going to need some apple juice and some barbecue sauce
those will come in a little bit later but seriously four ingredients super simple
now we got to prep our pork belly i'm sure you guys have seen or heard recipes for pork belly
burnt ends those are amazing that's not what this is we're smoking the whole slab of pork
belly at the end i'll show you ways to cube it and kind of turn those into burnt ends if that's
what you'd like but for this application i leave the slab whole because i like the option of being
able to slice it for sandwiches or it's amazing sliced and put into ramen or like there's just
a lot you can do with it if you start with it whole so that's my process grab yourself a knife
and we're going to score the top of this pork belly into a diamond pattern about one inch apart
we're not going all the way through the pork belly but we do want to kind of get through this first
layer of fat it's going to help with the rendering during the cooking process i think a smarter
person would probably just turn the cutting board i'm like moving my whole body around the table
sometimes so these beautiful diamonds are going to serve multiple purposes when we season it's
going to allow us to get our seasoning a little bit deeper but these channels are going to help
render a lot of this super thick fat on top out so we don't have to eat all of it later i mean
we want to eat a lot of it but we don't have to eat all of it you know what i'm saying and i'm
only scoring the top fatty side of this pork belly not both sides after that just take your seasoning
get after it use your fingers to separate those little channels so you can get the seasoning
down into the pork belly you're gonna need a few tablespoons here but you can be pretty liberal
so artsy
okay i feel happy with this our pork belly is scored it's seasoned now it's time to
get it onto the smoker i have my pellet smoker running at 225 degrees any wood is really quite
delicious with pork belly but i do love fruit wood something like an apple or a cherry would be
very very delicious with this pork belly and what else okay we got plum in there right now
we do have plum in there right now so like i said fruity woods are awesome for pork belly
uh this is gonna go onto the smoker 225 and this is going to roll for about five ish hours it's a
rough estimate use the thermometer we're looking for an internal temperature of about 165 degrees
here and i am going to be coming out and spritzing this pork belly every hour so with apple juice
our pork belly has been smoking for about five hours we've been spritzing with apple juice it
smells fantastic now it's time to wrap it up for a braising phase that will really help to render
out the rest of the fat and break down those connective tissues in the bellies that this
piece of pork belly just melts in my mouth when we're all done so i'm just gonna tear off a large
piece of heavy duty foil it gives me a little bit of extra width and a little bit more durable
durability it's a hard work a little bit more durability so that it we
don't poke any holes in it and none of the liquids leak out the sides
i'm going to add about a half a cup of apple juice to this foil wrap that's going to add a
little bit of moisture some sweetness it's also going to reinforce the flavors that we used in
the apple juice from the spritzing i'm just going to fold up the sides make a little boat
you only need about a half a cup and since i have some left
from my spray bottle i'm just going to use that
you want to wrap this as tight as you can pressing that foil against the edges of the pork belly you
really don't want any big air pockets in there you want the foil right up against the meat
and then this is going back on our smoker still at 225 degrees
and i think the next step will take anywhere between three and four hours
we're looking for an internal temperature of about 200 degrees for this pork belly
all right you guys our pork belly has been on the smoker for about three hours since
we wrapped it i just checked the temperature it was reading right around 200 to 202 degrees
depending on where i put my thermometer that means it is time to come off the smoker
i've got a half foil pan that i'm gonna bring my pork belly over to just so that i can catch
any juices that try to sneak out from that foil
it smells amazing
at this point the pork belly is technically done so you have a few options here my
favorite is to pull it out of the foil wrap baste it with my favorite barbecue sauce
and then slice it up and serve it with toothpicks like a little party appetizer if you are one that
likes the pork belly burnt ends vibe this is where you could chop it into cubes toss it with barbecue
sauce butter brown sugar put it back on the smoker at 225 degrees for another 45 minutes to an hour
and let it tighten up and give you those little you know crispy nuggets or you could chill it down
completely and do thin slices and fry them up in a pan it makes an amazing like blt
this smoked pork belly situation there are just a lot of ways to enjoy this as for me
i'm going back on the smoker with a healthy slathering of barbecue sauce
all right pop the lid closed on this bad boy let it go for just a few minutes what we're really
looking for is that sauce to kind of tighten on the outside a little bit i could go for as
little as 5 minutes or up to 15 to 20 minutes just depending on how tight you want yourself
well that's beautiful
like i said there are a million ways to serve this but i'm going to cut mine in half
and give you a beautiful cross section of the smoked pork belly so you can see how the fats
rendered out the meat has just become almost fall apart tender and then i get to try some
look how beautifully rendered out that fat is
got a nice little pile of pork belly bites right here take this one right from the front
i think my favorite thing about this cross section is you really can see how well rendered
the fat is between these layers of meat you get that pink smoky smoke ring across the bottom
all this is just going to melt my mouth when i try and bite it isn't it
it's a risk i'm willing to take
gosh perfect i mean
whoa that's rare occurrence just be patting myself on the back
perfectly tender the sweet rub and everything sauce come together to give you a nice barbecue
flavor that's traditional and complementary but you can still taste every anxious moment
of the pork belly itself absolutely delicious i love this because of how versatile it is
we'll cube this one up serve it as appetizers before dinner tonight and then we'll save this
guy and tomorrow i'll slice it up and we'll either put it in some ramen or on some blt's
i can't wait i hope you guys give this one a try it's so simple i know you guys are gonna love it
it's a great same day project you can do start to finish in eight hours when you smoke this one
at home make sure you snap a photo post it online use the hashtag #heygrillhey that way i can see it
and cheer you on on your journey to becoming a backyard barbecue hero see you next time