Crispy Cantonese Roast Pork

Crispy Cantonese Roast Pork "Siu Yuhk" 燒肉 (directly translated as "roast meat") is an essential part of Chinese Canto bbq cuisine. I grew up visiting Chinatown in New York every weekend with my family. For Chinese school, for groceries. We would walk past bakeries and restaurants, and many of the restaurants would feature Chinese bbq or tanks of live seafood at their storefronts. Seeing a plump soy sauce chicken, crispy roast duck, or fatty roast pork hanging in the window is always the best advertising a restaurant can have. You tell the butcher what you want by the pound, he chops it up and gives it to you with some cups of soy sauce or ginger scallion oil. Call us barbaric, but sometimes we can't even wait to get home and we start eating the meat straight out of the box with our hands!

​With the COVID19 quarantine in effect, we found ourselves craving all sorts of food that we normally get at restaurants, especially Cantonese style crispy roast pork.

I found a wonderful recipe on Pinterest from a blog called What to Cook Today and made some adjustments to the marinade to suit our tastes, but the method, time and temperature is the same. Definitely check out their food blog, there's lots of great recipes there! I can't wait to try other flavor profiles for this crispy pork recipe! You can enjoy this crispy pork with a bed of lettuce wraps, with bao buns, with rice, in sandwiches or tortillas, the list goes on!

The key to getting that crackly crispy AF skin is to make sure to pat the skin super dryyyyy before you oven it. You can honestly marinate the meat part with whatever flavor you want. We went with sweet hoisin and peppery flavors. The rest is in a salt crust that further draws out moisture to help achieve the crispy skin.

Don't worry about the salt crust making your pork too salty—once it is done baking, the loose salt forms a hard crust that comes off easily and you just have to brush off any excess before returning it to the oven to finish the roasting process.

Then it's a low broil for about 20 minutes and the pork skin begins to crackle, snap and pop!

Out comes a beautifully crackled crispy roast pork. It makes my mouth water just looking at the photos of it again. So. freaking. good. I know, I know, you've been scrolling for a while, recipe is down below!

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 lbs pork belly, skin on​
• 1 tbsp five spice powder
• 2 tbsp hoisin sauce
• 2 tbsp white pepper
• 2 tbsp black pepper
• 2 tsp cinnamon powder
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup shaoxing wine
• 2 tsp sesame oil
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 box coarse sea salt for baking

​DIRECTIONS:

1. Dry off the pork belly​ and ensure the skin portion is completely dried.
2. Mix the five spice, white pepper, black pepper, cinnamon, hoisin sauce, brown sugar, shaoxing wine, sesame oil and 2 tsp salt. Rub it on the meat portion of the pork belly, taking care not to get the skin wet. Pour the rest of the marinade into the container, rest the pork skin up and marinate overnight in the refrigerator, uncovered. The refrigerator will help draw moisture out from the skin.
3. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. In a oven safe pan, place a sheet of aluminum foil in it. Remove the pork belly from the marinade and place onto the foil, wrapping the foil up around the pork belly. Ensure about 1/2 inch of foil folds up above the pork belly skin. Make sure the foil is wrapped snugly around the sides to prevent the meat from drying out while baking in the oven.  Again, make sure the pork belly skin is dry.
4. Pour a 1/2 inch of coarse salt on top of the skin to form a salt crust.
5. Bake in the oven for 1.5 hours. After 1.5 hours, remove from the oven and carefully remove the salt crust from the top. Brush off any excess salt.
6. Put the pork back into the oven and broil on low for 15-20 minutes or until the skin is crackled to your liking.
7. Once crisp and crackled, remove from the oven and place meat onto a cutting board to cut and serve with lettuce as lettuce wraps, a side to go with rice or with noodles, whatever you like. 

Just look at that deliciousness. Don't you wish you could pull it right off the screen to sink your teeth into?! Be sure not to cover the meat because the steam and heat will make the skin soft and no longer crispy, which will result in sadness. 

I hope you enjoy this recipe! We had this with lettuce, an assortment of sauces like sweet thai chili, peanut sauce and hoisin sauce to dip, and a side of pickled cucumbers for a nice refreshing crunch. Until next time!

​- Jenny