Grilled Sweet-Glazed Pork Belly

Source: Anchor Ranch Farm

Pork belly is an under-appreciated cut of meat in the United States because of the increased popularity of bacon since the social buzz campaigns of the Noughties. I blame Muscles Glasses.

I mean, bacon is wonderful, but so is the uncured pork belly. Also, you can make bacon out of a lot more than just pork belly. Shoulder bacon is, I think, for example, a better choice for bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches.

Pork belly is more popular in Asian cuisine and we have featured several ideas from Asian-style cooking for how to prepare pork belly, including Red-Braised Pork Belly (Dong Po Rou) and Chashu Pork Belly. However, those are relatively complex recipes which require a lot of time in the oven. This is a faster (somewhat) version that uses a grill.

Materials

1 pork belly roast, skin off (skin on roasts are better used for some other method)

Soy sauce and honey or sugar-syrup

A grill. A propane grill would be easiest but charcoal is possible

Grill tongs

A fire extinguisher

Method

Slice the pork belly into strips a half inch or less in thickness and about 3 inches long.

Mix a marinade of soy sauce and honey or sugar syrup. Proportions are up to you but don’t skimp on the sweetness, go light on the salty, and use enough liquid to cover the belly strips. Add other ingredients for additional flavor: garlic, red pepper flakes, onion, orange juice (if you need more liquid), brown sugar, perhaps other spices — whatever you like.

Pork belly strips in marinade. Source: Anchor Ranch Farm

Marinate the pork belly slices in the marinade for at least an hour. A good way to cover the meat without wasting a pile marinade ingredients is to put everything into a resealable plastic bag. Close the bag up almost all the way and submerge it in a pot of cold water until just the very top of the bag is exposed (so the water doesn’t go inside). The water will push the air out of the bag, creating good contact between meat and marinade without having to drown it. Close the now mostly vacuum-sealed bag and let the marinade do its work.

When ready to cook, take the meat out of the marinade and drain it but save the marinade. Start a two-zone fire in your grill and lay the strips of pork belly over the hot zone, working quickly. This is where a propane grill is nice, because the fatty pork belly will cause flare ups and it’s very nice to be able to turn off the flame. If using a charcoal grill, make sure the coals are all the way over on one side, don’t use a lot of coals, and make sure there is plenty of open grill top away from the flame. Close the lid of your grill.

Pork belly on the grill “hot zone” (easier on a gas grill where you can turn on and off burners as needed, but possible with charcoal also.) Source: Anchor Ranch Farm

Keep the lid closed to minimize flare ups. If when you start a grease fire, move all the pork belly off the flame, turn off the gas if possible, close the lid and wait for the fire to go out. If you only have a charcoal grill and you don’t feel completely comfortable handling a grease fire in your grill safely, take your pork belly to a friend’s house who has a gas grill so you can turn the heat off.

Once the pork belly gets some color on the first side (flare ups help with this), flip it once to the other side. This entire step will only take a few minutes.

Pork belly moved off direct heat to the grill’s “cold zone”. Only the burner pointed to in the photo is on. Note long sleeves of natural cotton fiber to protect from sizzling pops of pork fat.

Once you have some good color on the pork belly strips and and enough char to feel like you’re grilling, move all your pork belly strips to the cold zone of the grill. They don’t need to be spread out, you can put them in a clump or a pile away from the flame. Take your reserved marinade and brush or drizzle it over the strips. Then close the lid and let them cook with indirect heat. For better results let the pork belly strips cook in indirect heat long enough until they get soft. We left them for only about 10 minutes and that was not long enough; some pieces were chewy. Try waiting 30 minutes or more. You’re not going to dry out the fatty pork belly, just be careful to keep it away from the direct flame so as not to burn it.

Vinegar-based quick pickled (1 hour or so) vegetables are a great enhancement to fatty meats, especially in hot weather. Save the vinegar brine for future picklings!

When your pork belly strips are the desired texture and softness, take them off the grill. We made sliders with brioche buns and a quick cucumber pickle (julienned cucumber, vinegar, salt, sugar, coriander seeds, one hour) but this would be great in a rice bowl as well.

Simple Pork Cuts Checklist/Walkthrough

This is a bare-bones (or boneless - hah!) guide for placing a custom butcher order for half a pig. We have some more in-depth plans elsewhere and there are probably hundreds of cuts you can get from half a pig, so if you have the time and desire to be adventurous then by all means, just start looking at “cuts of pork” and you’ll find a lot. However, if you are ordering a half hog from us or another local farmer so that you can put good food on the table for your family and you don’t have time to do hours of research, here you go.

The primal cuts of pork are the Shoulder, Loin, Belly, and Ham.

1. Shoulder: If you are going to get any roasts at all, get a Boston Butt roast or two. A smaller 3-pound roast makes leftovers for us (2 adults, 2 small children). The Picnic shoulder also makes good roasts for pulled pork. If you want fewer roasts and smaller cuts, the shoulder can also be cut into steaks. Shoulder bacon is good, and the picnic shoulder is also good ground for extra sausage or cut into stew meat.

2. Loin: We prefer double-thickness pork loin chops; you could also keep the loin as one big roast or a few smaller roasts. Two double-thick pork chops are a good meal for our family. Bone in means you don’t get baby back ribs, but you do get bones in your chops. The tenderloin cooks differently from other loin meat, so it may be best to have it separate. Grind the sirloin or cut it up for stew meat, it’s not a good cut for chops (unless you really like it.)

3. Belly: Take the spare ribs in half racks or a whole, and make standard bacon from the belly meat or have it cut as uncured belly roasts.

4. Ham: A whole cured ham is very large. You can also get it cut into smaller hams. For easy-cooking smaller meals, have the center of the cured ham sliced into steaks and keep the ends as smaller hams. We think thicker ham steaks up to an inch thick are more versatile, but for faster cooking you could go as thin as 1/4 inch. This is not sliced deli ham, you do need to cook it. If you don’t want cured ham you can also make roasts or steaks from a fresh, uncured ham, or you can grind it to get extra sausage. Uncured ham roasts are good but not quite as good as shoulder roasts.

5. Ground/sausage: You will get a few pounds of ground pork or sausage regardless, from the trimmings. If you want more than a few pounds you’ll need to pick something to add (such as the sirloin, picnic shoulder, or the uncured ham.)

6. Fat: A couple pounds of fat renders to a couple pints of cooking lard. Leaf lard fat has a more neutral flavor and you can use it in pastries. If you want more lard than that take some back fat, which makes lard that is great for frying and pan-frying. Homemade lard is an excellent cooking fat, but plan to store it in the refrigerator or freezer unless you’re using it up pretty quickly.

7. Other stuff: Get the hocks cured and smoked to add umami flavor to soups and stews. Extra bones and the pig feet are good for making stock. If you are new to organ meat, the heart is relatively easy to cook and mild in flavor. Pork liver has a stronger flavor than chicken liver; kidneys have quite a strong flavor. Pork jowl is quite fatty and can be braised or cured into a very fatty bacon. The whole head and the tail are probably not worth keeping unless you have specific plans.

Once you know what you want, custom ordering from the butcher is super simple. Here’s the literal text of an email we sent one of our custom butchers recently for a half hog for our family:

Hi [butcher’s name]

It’s [our name] [our phone number]

For our half hog:

Shoulder: make as many 3 pound-ish bone in roasts as possible. Smaller is fine, we want them to fit into a 6-quart slow cooker.

Loin: pull off tenderloin, baby back ribs (full rack), double-thick chops (2 per package), stew meat the sirloin (1 pound pkg).

Ham: grind for sausage

Belly: spare ribs (full rack), regular bacon 1 pound packages.

Sausage: 1/4 breakfast sausage (loose), and split the other 3/4 between brats and ground pork. 1 pound packages
Organ meats none this time, I'll take any trotters and extra bones.

Thanks!

(NB: We eat organ meats but our personal freezer was getting full at the time, and we already had plenty of lard and smoked ham hocks on hand.)

What to make from half a hog (one example)

If you’re ordering a half hog from us or from another local family farmer and getting your meat custom cut by a local butcher, you may be wondering what to have the butcher make with all that pork. Here is one example. You could probably copy this and send it to the butcher if you like.

This is relatively simple; you could, of course, be a lot more creative in what you get, and you could keep a lot more of the fat and offal if you want to cook more of it. The amount of extra fat here will make perhaps around 6 pints of rendered lard; by all means keep more for rendering if you want more.

This example has a lot of cured bacon and ham but you will not get as much sausage. You’ll still get a few pounds of sausage though, from the trimmings, so you’ll need to decide what kind of sausage you want. Bulk (loose) breakfast or Italian sausage both tend to be pretty versatile in the kitchen; if you want something like bratwurst they’ll be delicious but butchers normally charge extra as putting sausage in casings is extra work. Worth it if you don’t mind the extra cost! If you want more sausage, two decent options are to grind the ham leg or grind the picnic shoulder. For some other ideas see this post.

Packaging: butcher paper works great. Some butchers will offer vacuum-sealed plastic for an extra cost. This makes it easier to see what you’re pulling out of the freezer, and it’s possible the vacuum seal will prevent freezer burn longer. Throwing a pork barbecue extravaganza for your friends seems like more fun though. Both paper and plastic are good options for freezer storage, so it depends on your preference.

Here is the custom cut example:

SHOULDER

Picnic shoulder roast, bone-in, trim as needed but keep it on the larger size around 6+ pounds if possible, for smoking.

Make a little shoulder bacon, 1 pound packages. Cut the rest of the Boston Butt into a smaller boneless roast or roasts, in the 3 pound range.

LOIN

Pull off the tenderloin and keep it whole. Take out the baby-back ribs as well and keep as a whole rack.

Make double-thickness boneless pork chops, 2 per package. Keep a good 3/4 inch or so of fat on the the chops.

Add the pork sirloin to the sausage grind.

BELLY

Spare ribs yes, whole rack.

Standard bacon, 1 pound packages.

HAM

Cure the ham and take some center-cut bone-in ham steaks, 3/4 inch thick, one per package.

Keep the butt and shank parts of the ham whole, so these are two smaller hams in the 3-pound range in addition to the center-cut ham steaks.

OTHER

Smoke the hocks.

Make some jowl bacon, 1 pound packages.

Package about 10 pounds of back fat and about 5 pounds of leaf lard.

Package any extra bones for soup stock. Yes to neck bones if available.

Split the feet for stock.

Package a couple pounds of pork skin, enough to make a batch of pork rinds but not go crazy.

Heart and liver, yes (if available). No to the rest of the offal.

Our pig cut list December 2017

Just a quick update with a list of what we decided to do with our with our whole hog.  More updates to come soon!

Head: Kept to make head cheese.

Tongue, Jowls, Neck, Backbone: Kept to make sauces or to braise.

Offal, Lard, Soup Bones: Kept.

Shoulder: Cut as roasts (Boston Butt boneless roast and picnic shoulder roast).  Cut off some of one side as country-style ribs.

Loin: Kept one crown rib roast and cut the rest as pork chops one inch thick and frozen in packages 3 chops to a package.

Ham: Cut one fresh ham in half.  Cured another ham and center-cut for ham steaks.

Belly: Kept one fresh pork belly cut in half for roasts.  Cured and cut the other as bacon sliced and packaged in 1 pound packages.