Super easy KRUSTENBRATEN Germanies Crispy Pork Belly recipe

Did you know that Krustenbraten is one of the tastiest pork roasts? It's juicy, it is crunchy and it's super super flavorful. Big thanks to Kamado Joe for sponsoring this episode. The days are getting shorter, the temperature is dropping and that means it is time for the German Krustenbraten. You got those summer hot days and a couple of them is real nice but then at the end of summer you're starting to think how nice would it be to have a nice Krustenbraten. After this video you know why I have that thought and you will have it too. Now there's a few simple steps in creating Krustenbraten. You're going to need a beautiful piece of pork and this actually comes from the leg of the pig. However you can also use different cuts. The thing is it's about a beautiful piece of pork meat and you gotta have a good amount of fat and skin on it to turn it into a real Krustenbrat. Now what I'm looking for is a crunchy bite on the outside and therefore I'm going to score the skin. I'm just gonna slice into it all the way through. Once you made all the cuts you have a checkerboard of pork skin. The reason why this is so important is because the meat will shrink, the fat cap will bulge up and the skin will stand out and then it will become more crisp. The fat will render down better and will make a super super tasty Krustenbrat. The next step is to inject the Krustenbraten with a brine. You see the Krustenbraten is like a ham and therefore you gotta make a brine like this. That consists of 500 milliliters of water and three tablespoons of the Texas barbecue seasoning. If you wonder how to do this then we've written it down on our seasoning jars so you can do this at home very very easily. And then take your injection needle and inject it into the pork. Every serious cooking shop will have an injection needle and the goal is to keep on injecting until there is no more fluid going into the pork. At least not more than it's coming out again. I managed to get about a cup of brine into my pork. The rest is here on the dripping tray and now I'm going to finish by seasoning the meat side of the pork. And therefore I will be using the Pitmaster X pork seasoning of course. It's just going to give it a little bit more flavor on the outside and it will give you that nice roasted ham experience. Now that looks about right and it needs to go on the barbecue. I got my Big Joe already set up. I put in some charcoal, a couple of fire starters and lit them up. And it's now steadily cruising at a temperature of around 180 degrees Celsius which is around 360 degrees Fahrenheit. And I achieved that by having the bottom vent about a finger open and the top vent well a little over a finger open. It's been warm for a while now and I can now set it up for indirect heat. So I'm going to put in the heat deflectors, put in the grill grates and now I can just slide in my Krustenbraten. And that is how easy it actually is. Close the lid and just let it continue to cook. And this is going to take probably over two hours, maybe two and a half to three hours of cooking until I've got that skin crisp. The skin really needs to break down and therefore we need to take our time. In the meantime I'm going to show you a super easy version of sauerkraut which you can make in under 10 minutes. And I love this because it's kind of different than the normal sauerkraut. I'm going to preheat my wok, fire it up. Now this thing gets super hot super fast and I've got a windshield that I can just slide to wherever the wind's coming from to keep that flame steady and keep the heat with the pan. And then I'm just going to remove the outer leaves of this Chinese cabbage, make a cross cut and then start slicing. See that's easy. A little bit of oil, sunflower oil, peanut oil, something that can resist a lot of heat. Just wait until the oil's at frying temperature. Once the oil's hot the cabbage goes in. I've got some herb butter that I'm going to add just a little bit and then I'm going to put in some white wine vinegar. That will bring the acidity that you know from sauerkraut. This is about a quarter cup to 75 milliliters. Let that steam a little bit until most of the moisture has evaporated. And that's the moment when you want to do a taste test. That's really good. I got the acidity that I'm looking for. I got the wine flavor. Now I need it to sweeten up a little bit so I'm going to add some sugar. This is optional but I know my kids like a little bit of sugar in sauerkraut. Balances things out. Another taste test. Spot on. That's two teaspoons of sugar. It's been two and a half hours and... Look at that. That is a thing of beauty. This thing is insane. What a thing of beauty. I'm just going to take one of these blocks off just to demonstrate what I'm talking about. Oh look at that. It just comes off. The science behind this is that this crust is built up in layers which means you got the bottom layer that connects to the fat and then you got all these small layers. It's not enough to just make the skin hard. Actually have to really cook it through and through until the skin is fully cooked and that's when it becomes crispy and really enjoyable to eat. It should be like chips in your mouth. This needs to rest now. At least 20 minutes. Let's slice into the krustenbraten. You ready for this? You see the puncture holes from the brining? Those little spots there and there. And look at the smoke ring. Insane. We got a nice smoke ring here going all the way up. Skin's just falling off. That's how soft and tender this is now. Some sauerkraut and then on goes our krustenbraten. Look at how beautiful that is. A little bit of herb butter. Flambéed. This is an absolute thing of beauty. Can't wait to dive into this. All right now for the taste test because I'm really really extremely hungry. And with the smoke ring and a little bit of the smoke flavor it becomes something spectacular. And I really really hope you guys are going to give this a try. As always the recipe is on our website pitmasterx.com See you guys next time.