Go to the Recipe: Crispy Cantonese Roast Pork Belly (Siu Yuk)
Ok I lack an air fryer but have both a convection oven and a searzall. Which do you think would be preferable? Or use both (roast follow by searzall)?
Convection would be a great way to go here. I would crank the temperature up to 475 F to start, and see how the pork fares along the cook time. For any stubborn spots that don't puff up, you can definitely use the Searzall to help the skin along after roasting—we've even had good results using a heat gun. I would just be mindful not to position the Searzall too close to the skin, since it can burn if you're not careful.
Good luck!
What does "Sand ginger: TK" mean?
Ah, great catch! All fixed.
Thank you so much for this recipe! Is there a way to flatten the meat to get an even layer before frying it up?
This is great, sous vide pork belly is delicious but I never managed to get the skin pleasantly crispy afterwards. Looking forward to trying this.
For sure. There are a few ways that come to mind:
1. You can press the piece of belly after the first sous vide cook, after poking the skin. Weigh it down with a press/weight/sheet pan situation to really get a flat piece. This tends to compress parts of the meat and fat, which isn't the end of the world, but it will definitely help to get a flat piece.
2. A more low-tech, less invasive method would be to prop up the piece with a small ball of aluminum foil in the oven. So if there's a side or corner of the meat that rests lower than another area, you can elevate that side to get an even surface. This method works pretty well, and it's best suited for pieces of pork that are only slightly deformed.
3. If you're a perfectionist and don't care about yield, you can also just trim the bottom with a sharp knife either after the sous vide step, or after 1 day of air drying. This will get you a very level piece of belly, but the downside is reduced yield (though the scraps are still tasty.)
Hope this helps!
I would love to make this but i would need to freeze a bit. maybe after the sous vide cook and drying?
I never tested into this, but you could definitely try freezing after the drying step. I would be mindful of any freezer burn that might occur unexpectedly, so maybe wrap the belly in a layer of plastic wrap after the air dry step.
I have tested into freezing after crisping. You can even slice the crisped belly into strips, then freeze each strip. From there, I would reheat each strip as needed (from frozen) at a more moderate temperature (350-375F). If the skin starts to burn prematurely, you can shield the piece with a loose piece of aluminum foil.
Let me know how this works out for you!
Made this over the weekend, it was perfect.
Gorgeous!
Nice! I'm looking forward to trying this out. Two questions:
1) For the air drying step: I get that the point is to dry out the skin on top, but I was surprised that you didn't shield the sides, like with the foil boat technique. Does it not matter that the sides dry out as well as the top?
2) For the air frying: I was surprised to see you rotating it. Isn't the point of an air fryer that it has strong air flow inside the oven, distributing the heat evenly within the oven? Or is it still an issue because of the relative sizes of the meat and the oven?
1) I did play around with shielding the sides and bottom during the air-drying step. I think it comes down to personal preference: Shielding gives you a slightly more yielding exterior, but keep in mind that the air frying step renders so much fat that the exterior basically fries in its own fat, so you end up with a bit of a crust anyway. I actually preferred the non-shielded versions because they developed a bit of a pellicle situation over the air-drying period, which I enjoyed.
2) I'll preface this by saying that very few ovens/air fryers are perfect. While the Joule Oven Air Fryer Pro does an amazing job circulating air and generating convection currents, we found that at the top end of its temperature range (465+), there were still hot spots toward the right side of the oven as the elements cycled on and off to maintain temperature. So for this particular recipe, it was helpful to rotate. Also, rotating is just a good habit, since it encourages you to check your work throughout the process.
Loving this! I have a question: don't you get warmed-over flavor due to fatty acids oxidation? I can taste it when cooked pork has stayed in the fridge for 24 hours or longer.
Looking forward to hear about your tests.
Thanks!
WOF is a legitimate concern. Unfortunately, prolonged exposure to oxygen will result in some lipid oxidation. If you’re very sensitive to it, it is slightly detectable. But I'd argue that the heavy cure with sand ginger, paired with the aggressive high heat puffing step mitigates a lot of that flavor. If you really want to get rid of the WOF, you could look into industrial practices like injecting phosphates (SHMP comes to mind) to slow down lipid oxidation.
As an alternative strategy (though I didn't test this), you could play with fast-tracking the air-dry step (after the sous vide step) in a low oven with convection (say, 150F or lower, if possible) until the skin is well dried. Then I would proceed with the crisping step as written.
Hello, could you please suggest some ideas on how to pair this with rice, vegetables, and a sauce to create a complete meal?
Used fresh pork from a local, pastured old-line Duroc we just butchered. No air fryer and used our oven. Worked beautifully!
Not Tim, but I recently served this alongside steamed white rice, stir-fried choy sum, and some stir-fried hakurei turnips, their greens, and shimeji (and a little smashed cucumber salad). Doesn't need a sauce with the dipping salt. (It also doesn't need the dipping salt!)
For convectional oven, do I use the regular fan forced or do I use the broil function?
Use regular fan forced, on high. If the skin still needs some puffing help at the end, you could use the broiler as a finishing move. Just be very vigilant about checking and rotating it every few seconds to make sure the skin doesn't burn.
This looks amazing guys. I just wanna point out a little discrepancy between the video and recipe (may be it's intentional!). The video says 1% salt by weight of the pork, but the recipe has around 1.75% salt by weight.
Looks amazing! I'm curious to know if you experimented with adding additional salt/baking powder to the skin. I was thinking it wouldn't be a bad idea to do this post-sous-vide to further desicate the skin while drying.
HI Tim. Nicholas Gavin said in his recipe for Easy Sous Vide Porchetta the following:
With sous vide, you’re doing the exact opposite—placing skin in a sealed, warm, and wet environment for 24 hours gets it about as wet as is possible, which makes it nearly impossible to get the skin crispy. That’s not to say we didn’t try! We did our best during development, but our best efforts resulted in hard, almost inedible skin encasing perfectly cooked and seasoned meat—a waste.
Here you sous vide for 16 hours and get the skin crispy and, I assume, not "hard, almost inedible skin".
So, which is correct? Sous vide inedible or sous vide crispy and edible? If the latter can I make a pork belly porchetta following the steps here?
I have a pork belly ready to go for this recipe. Here's hoping. Thanks for any reply in advance.
Hello Al I can see how both these points are conflicting.
When I was developing the Easy sous vide porchetta I was referring mostly to simply cooking sous vide and going into the oven for crisping. When developing that recipe I was prioritizing easy/practical. Tim unlocked the crispy finish by adding a long air dry in the fridge in step 7. If you follow Tim's approach the belly can be crispy and edible.
Though I haven't went back to the Easy Sous Vide Porchetta to try this I feel quite confident you can cook it sous vide and then poke hole and air dry before roasting.
Thanks for taking the time to respond. I plan on trying both recipes now.
I hit one corner of the pork with a torch for a minute but most of it puffed perfectly. Juicy, crispy delicious. I prepped the rest as a skin on easy sous vide porchetta that I'll make soon. Thanks for the great recipe. If I could post a video you would hear how crispy the skin was
Looks amazing! Not saying you need it because your results look spot on but another tool thats great for those hard to get areas that doesn't puff is a heat gun.
Here's the Easy Sous Vide Porchetta with the skin on, finished with Tim's method for crisping the skin in Tim's Cantonese Roast Pork recipe here. I initially hung it in my convection oven but it was so tender it eventually fell to the pan so I finished it on a rack. Again, if I could post a video you would hear how crunchy the pork skin turned out. I didn't think to cover the ends with foil but will next time. And yes, I need to clean my oven. Thanks again to both of you for the recipes and answer to my question.
What if my oven only goes all the way to 230C? Any adjustments I can make to still get a crispy skin?
I'm getting fatty white marks on the top of my Cantonese pork from when I poked in, is this normal it was in the refrige 4 hours..
Yes, this is completely normal. It’s just subcutaneous fat
Hey! Looking forward to making this recipe. However, I do not have a joule oven, but I was recently gifted a cosori 6 qt. air fryer. Could I finish pork belly in this type of air fryer at same temp and duration of cook?
Hi! I looked up the specs on your air fryer, and it looks like the max temperature possible is 450F. This is on the low end of the temperature range I found necessary to puff up the skin. It takes slightly longer to puff (~15 min longer), but it should get there. If there are ways to move the skin closer to say, the top heating elements (by elevating the pork with a large piece of foil, or a rack), then you stand a greater chance of success.
Anecdotally, if there are spots on the skin that haven't puffed up by the end of this process, then you can lightly hit it with a blowtorch (very lightly, lowest setting) or even a heat gun (if you have one), and the skin puffs up beautifully.
