Cracking Crackling
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There’s an art to creating perfect crackling and everyone claims their way is the best. Do you baste, or not baste? Fry? Remove the rind from the meat and cook separately? Dry the skin with a hair dryer? Blast of heat at beginning or end of cooking, or both?
For me, the best crackling still has a bit of soft unctuous fat underneath, the crunchy skin finely blistered and sprinkled with coarse sea salt. This method never fails to create gorgeous crispy crackling.
Please tell us if you’ve discovered another fail safe method!
Serves 6
- 1.5kg pork belly
- 2 tbsp Maldon sea salt
- 1 tbsp fennel seeds
- light olive oil
- 1 glass dry cider (optional, for sauce)
Either ask your butcher to score the belly, or do it yourself with a Stanley knife, cutting right through the skin and fat, but not into the meat.
To help the skin dry out, the belly must be left at room temperature, uncovered, for a few hours before cooking.
Rub fine sea salt into the skin, dabbing off any beads of moisture that appear on the surface with kitchen towel. Preheat your oven to its highest temperature, about 220°C.
Grind a tablespoon of sea salt to a fine powder in a pestle and mortar with a tablespoon of fennel seeds. Rub thoroughly into the dry skin with a tablespoon of light olive oil, right into the scored crevices, then sprinkle over another tablespoon of coarse, not ground, sea salt.
Place the belly in a roasting dish on top of a trivet of onions and apples, peeled, and quartered, seasoned and doused in olive oil, and tossed with a handful of thyme sprigs.
Roast on the highest oven shelf at 220°C for 20 minutes, to give the skin a good blast of heat, then turn the heat down to 160°C and cook for a further hour and 15 minutes.
Turn the heat up to 200°C and cook for a further 40 minutes. This would be a good time to put par boiled potatoes in the oven, if you’re having a roast. Your belly is ready.
For a perfect gravy, move the pork from the roasting tray to a serving dish, save any onion or apple that has miraculously not turned to mush to serve with the pork. Pour off the oodles of fat and place the roasting dish on the hob, pour in a generous glass of dry cider and let it bubble away for a few minutes, scraping the bottom of the dish to release all the gooey bits. Thicken with arrowroot or flour if you like – we prefer it thinner, so it gets easily soaked up by the belly meat.
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Hi
Love the sound of this, just right for autumn night in. We do something very similar with pork belly on a bed of potato’s , carrots and onion. I crank it right up to 245C for 154 mins, then to 180 or so for 40 mins. Will give this recipe a go for sure.
For ultimate, pork scratching crackling, I remove the fat/crackling when dish is cooked, rub a bit more salt on and return in dry tray to 245C until I have finished plating up. Then switch off oven and leave in the oven until cool.
Wait until Countryfile has started and munch away happily before credits finish
Nice, thanks for the tip! I like the fact that you can do that while the meat is resting!
Awesome recipe! I do love roast pork in all it’s forms. For my crackling, I pretty much do your salt and start on a high heat method. I find a blast under a high grill finishes it off perfectly – keep an eye on it tho; it crackles up mighty fast!