Twice cooked pork belly means crunchy and tender pork belly. Snake beans add a great green crunch accompanied with luscious savoury orange caramel sauce. One of my favourite recipes.
Rub skin of pork belly salt and set aside for 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 220 deg C (430 deg F). Line a roasting pan, big enough for your piece of pork belly, with non stick baking paper.
After 30 minutes wipe salt from the pork belly with paper towel. Remove any excess moisture, ensuring the belly is as dry as possible.
Drizzle skin of pork belly with olive oil and massage in with fingers. Place pork in roasting pan skin side down. Drizzle some olive oil over the facing up meat side of the pork and season with salt and cracked pepper. Place in the oven and roast for 40 minutes.
After 30 minutes reduce the oven temperature to 160 deg C (320 deg F). Turn your pork over in the roasting pan so it is now skin side up. Roast for another 1 ½ hours. Then turn temperature up to 190 deg C (375 deg F) and continue to cook until your skin has become crisp crackling.
Remove pork from oven and set aside to cool. While pork is cooling make the orange caramel sauce.
Once cool place pork skin side down on a chopping board and cut pork into 4cm cubes. Set aside until required.
Place wok over medium heat and add vegetable oil. Heat and add chilli, garlic and ginger. Once fragrant add snake beans. Cook while stirring for a few minutes and then add pork belly. Stir and toss for another minute and add orange caramel sauce. Cook for a further few minutes stirring continuously until pork is well coated in the caramel sauce.
Serve immediately with steamed rice.
Orange caramel sauce
Place a medium size saucepan over a low heat, add brown sugar and vinegar, stir until sugar has dissolved. Then add the res of the ingredients and increase heat until a hard simmer.
Continue to cook for around 10 minutes until the liquid has reduced by around ⅔ to become a syrup. Remove peel, star anise and cinnamon from the syrup and discard. The syrup is now ready to use.
You can cook your pork belly and make your orange caramel syrup the day ahead for this recipe. Keep both covered in the fridge until needed.