Yorkshire Dales food blog

Lots of  interest in Belly Pork at the moment and fellow food bloggers love it! I have tried it a few times and Marco Pierre Whites recipe with star anise and honey is one of my favourites but this recipe is a really simple traditional belly pork supper.

Roast Belly Pork

Ingredients:-

• 1kg Belly Pork (just feeds 4)
• Salt
• Vegetables, carrot, potato, shallots, courgette, swede, whatever you have
• 4 cloves garlic
• 500ml water
• a little oil for the roasting tin (I used groundnut oil)

Method:-

• Score skin of the pork with a Stanley knife about 10mm apart
• rub sea salt into incisions and remove excess from skin
• season with black pepper underneath only not on the skin
• add a little oil to the roasting tin and plonk your belly in and transfer to oven
• Hot to begin then lower the temperature, sory I’m not good with temperatures here as I put in the top oven of the Aga for the first hour, bottom oven for a further hour, then added the chunky cut veg, garlic and 500ml water and finished off back in the top oven for 25 mins.
• I added the courgette fairly late so as not to over cook
• when the crackling looks crispy enough transfer the pork to a plate and allow to rest while you make the gravy in the roasting tin, make sure you get all the goodness from the scrapings on the bottom of the tin.  You could use veg stock, gravy browning or whatever you fancy for the gravy.
• serve and enjoy, super crispy crackling and melt in the mouth pork, most of the fat cooks away, can be poured off or goes in the gravy!