Twice Cooked Pork Belly with Spiced Orange and Chilli Sauce

I borrowed the proper machine from my friend Tina and was all set to go. I read the instructions a little more carefully I discovered that I had to wait an hour for the machine to heat before putting my pouch of pork into the machine. This was not going to work as I had an important get togother with my 'ladies that lunch' group. So I thought I would have another attempt at at improvised sous vide cooking.

The finished pork was very tender, juicy and delicious. Based on this experiment and the one with the salmon I have decided that I will not purchase the Sous Vide machine. It is another piece of equipment that would require storage and probably not used enough for me to have one.

This is How I Made It

This time I used my large electric frypan. I two thirds filled it with hot tap water and placed a cake rack in the bottom.

I turned it on to the lowest setting, which for my pan is 1. Using my digital thermometer to check the temperatur I increased the the setting slightly until I was able to get readings of 70 -75 degress C. My resarch suggested a temperature of 70 deg C or more.

While I was getting the temperature of the improvised sous vide process organised I vacuum sealed the pork belly. It was a piece that was slightly more than 1 kg. Before vacuum sealing the pork belly I rubbed it all over with a little Kecap Manis soy sauce.

The pork was placed in the pan and lid of the frypan put on. The pork was left for 4 hours.

After 4 hours the pork felt soft and the pouch contined some nice brown juices that I saved for the sauce.

The pork was cut into four portions. They were reasonably generous serves, I could have made them slightly smaller but no one seemed to find it too much.

This is what the meat looked like after the sous vide step.

The pork belly portions were place on a parchment lined tray and baked at 200 deg C for 20 minutes.

To make the skin more crispy I put prk belly portions skin side down onto a very hot pan.

Meanwhile the sauce was cooking. It was the juices from the sous vide pouch, 2 tablespoons of orange jelly. Commercial marmalade could be used. A generous knob of fresh ginger, 2 cloves of garlic, both roughly chopped and 2 star anise were added. A liitle water was added to adjust the consistency.

The sauce was strained and then some finely chopped fresh chilli added.

If you find  the sauce a little too sweet add a squeeze of lemon or lime juice. I ended up with a approximately a cup of sauce which was enough for the four portions. Additional sauce could be made by increasing the jelly and adding some more soy and water or fresh stock.

I served it with steamed rice, broccolini and a type of slaw made with shredded cabbage, finely chopped celery, finely sliced apple, orange zest, chopped mint and lightly dressed with some sushi vinegar.