How to Achieve Crispy Roast Pork Belly Perfection on the Barbecue with Big Green Egg

Crispy roast pork belly, when it's done right, is absolutely delicious. Melts in your mouth, crispy crackling, beautiful. But when it's done wrong, it is absolutely awful. So let's pay attention. I'm going to show you the tips on how to make this perfectly on a barbecue. Our last video, we did it in the air fryer. It was so viral. You guys loved it. But it's summer now. Let's get outside. Let's get the barbecue fired up. Let's go. So I've chosen to use my big ring egg today. I've been using these for many years now. It's a ceramic style barbecue. You can use a Weber or a kettle style barbecue. Depends on what you've got. It's a similar sort of technique that we're going to use today. Let's get it lit. First up, you want to start with a nice clean barbecue. Before we lay it in this particular order, natural fire lighters, kindling, and then some charcoal, allowing enough air around it all to breathe. This is going to help it light up on fire. Now for the sexy part. You can use a blowtorch or matches. Please take care using this. You're aiming for those natural fire lighters to catch on fire. And job done. Now there's a lovely heat coming from that barbecue now. So we're just going to top it with our cast iron grill instead of the stainless steel one. And there's a reason for that. It's because I'm going to pair with this crispy pork belly, a lovely char-grilled peach salad. Everyone loves a little peachy salad. I particularly love the combination of fruit and pork together because it cuts through that richness, that fattiness so well. So I pushed all the coals onto one side, so I've got a hotter side than the other side, and that's where I'm going to put the pork. I'm just going to close that up, double check the temperature. So what I'm looking for is 260 degrees centigrade. It's kind of roughly like a really, if you're doing this in the oven, like a really hot temperature to get that skin really on its way to being the perfect crackling. Now's for the fun part. Let's prep the meat. So I got some delicious pork belly from the butchers the other day. And what I've done already is give it a good piercing. And then I coated it with hot water to blanch it. And then I've left it in the fridge uncovered for 48 hours so that the skin hardens up nicely. You can actually remove some of this fat, I think we'll remove some of this here, my fatty piece. I'm working quite quickly because it's very hot today. And you could do this with bone in or bone out, but I prefer bone out, it's going to cook it a lot quicker. And we're just going to score it in like one centimetre squares all across. And the reason for that is going to help the meat cook a little faster, keep it juicy, but I'm going to marinate, give it a sort of a rubbing with this five spice rub. Sprinkle that on top. You can use any rub like barbecue rub or I've got some lovely salt in here. You can let that marinate in the fridge another 24 hours, but I want to get cooking. Very similar to our previous video, you can make a foil boat, cook this on so that this part here of the meat doesn't cook too quickly. Or because this has dried out already, I'm going to use a, I'm going to use a roasting rack in the barbecue to kind of help prop up this meat so that it, the fat when it cooks, it basically stops it from pooling and it will just drip off into here onto the base. You can have a little tray underneath, which I'm going to do here, hatch it just to make sure it doesn't go into the fire and cause a bit of a flame. The fire is a beast to tame and I'm here for it. I think a lot of people get really flustered when it comes to fire and heat, but I don't know, maybe it's the Singaporean in me that doesn't mind the sheer heat. Right, so I put the charcoal onto one side. I've added a little bit of wood in there for a little extra smokiness. I'm letting that just burn out a little touch more. I'm going to put the pork here where it's a bit cooler. So that's going to catch all the extra fat. So that heat is going to cook that skin there. Let's close that up. So it's been about 30 minutes. I've been listening to it crackle on top in the ceramic cake and I know it's ready. I've brushed it with a little bit of white vinegar to help it pour out that bit more of the moisture from the skin. And I actually probably will leave that in that tray because it's scorching hot. So I've got a new clay. Um, check this out. Wow. This is going to be absolutely delicious. Half an hour. You can even probe the inside, double check it's cooked all the way through. Yeah, plenty done. So let's recap those important points. Choose the best quality pork you can afford. Prepare it. You need to prick it all over before blanching it and letting it sit in the because you don't want your barbecue to light up the wrong way. Getting hot and bothered now, but we're nearly there. I'm just going to leave that barbecue on nice and hot because I want to finish off doing the compliment with this crispy pork belly, the chargrilled peach salad. So this pork is now out of the oven. I'm just going to let that rest cool down before handling it. I'll pop that over here. Keep an eye. There's no greedy flies trying to get hold of it. Now the main ingredients for the peach salad is obviously some gorgeous peaches. Yeah, let's go fruit heavy. And like I said earlier, peaches with pork is such a good pairing because the fruit and the acidity from the acidity from the fruit just cuts through that fattiness of the pork so well. What we need to do, I'm going to leave the skin on and just half and twist them open and then just take out the stone. I'm just going to use my knife to slide up the stone. This peach is a little under ripe, but that's okay. There's always one, isn't there? Next up, we're going to gently oil your peaches with olive oil and then just give them a little rub all over. Now carefully use your hands or tongs and put it flesh side down first and then just leave them. Otherwise they could stick and cause a bit of a sticky mess and not in the good way. Now I'm currently obsessed with using tomatoes in my summer salads because they are so ripe, fresh, beautiful colors, and they just taste delicious. So all they need is a little bit of cutting in half and seasoning with that salt. This is going to bring out all that flavor. Next up is red onion. We're going to slice that really, really finely before we're going to marinate it with a little bit of red wine vinegar. This is going to help break down that harshness of the onion flavor. So you want to marinate this ahead. Let's have a look at my peaches. They smell incredible. It just actually just reminds me purely of summer, like the sugars from the peach is slightly caramelizing and producing this wonderful sauce and it just smells like syrup. It's like syrupy. So to bring this salad together, I'm going to add the tomatoes, a little bit of sliced red chili. All right, next up, peas. We've got some lovely summer, British summer peas. I've got some in the pod and some I've shelled already. These are prime in season. So I wanted to get these straight onto the barbecue with a little bit of fire to cook them through and that's it. It's going to add a real nice savory element, but also so much sweetness because they're super in season. I can't wait to get these on. These are one of my favorite things to do on the barbecue is just cook them directly in this. So I've got one of my favorite contraptions. This basket is going to stop it all falling through the grills and cooking, landing on those on the flames, but also get enough direct contact with that fire and cook them. And they're essentially going to steam in those pods. All right, these peas are done and I know they're done because I can hear them sizzling, like whistling, like a kettle that's boiling. That means that the steam is coming out of those peas and they'll be just right for eating. Now I'm just going to put in these peas into the basket to cook directly. Those are going to take only about 30 seconds. I'm going to keep these in the pods because like edamame beans, it's nice to suck them out of the pod. Now let's finish putting this salad together. Add the sliced red onions to the tomatoes along with a tablespoon of that red wine vinegar. Roughly chop up those peaches and then finish with your cooked peas. Add a bit of lemon for acidity before we finish it off with some pea shoots and some really good quality olive oil. Give it a good toss and let's serve it up. This is absolutely fantastic. Actually I probably could have laid off the second chili because it's so scorching hot now. I'm absolutely melting inside and out now, but it is delicious. The whole fruitiness goes so well with that richness of that pork and then you get that little bit of five spice just gives you a nice little ledge. Well I'm going to finish the rest of this inside the house because it is scorching. It's just too hot out here anymore. I hope you really enjoyed this episode. Give us a subscribe, like and follow if you haven't already. I will see you guys next week for more scorching hot content on the barbecue that is. See ya. I swear being a chef is mostly cleaning, but clean tools, clean equipment, happy chef. That's what I always say to my team. Clean kitchen, happy boss. There's something satisfying about cleaning barbecues because I've got it nice and hot and then it just comes off really easy, but obviously it's not too hot so that it doesn't burn my my bristle brush. I'm working very fast and I'm hot and sweaty. Dirty stuff.