Sticky good life pork belly

Sticky pork belly (1)

This is a fantastic tasty and very economical roast which will have your whole house smelling just wonderful!

As with all of my recipes I only use good quality, high welfare meat sourced as close to home as possible from local butchers.  I bought the piece of belly that you see above from B W Drewery in Hingham – not one of my usual butchers but I was in the village buying my usual fresh yeast for pizza night from the bakers and dropped in to see what they had on offer. I left with a whopping 6lb piece of belly of pork for the princely sum of £15!

I have to say I have never eaten a piece of Dingley Dell pork before but it was absolutely superb. It was succulent with an excellent flavour reminiscent of the fabulous meat that my uncle used to produce on his Norfolk farm many years ago. When our kids were little we would always impress upon them that we only ate “good life” meat and if you check out the Dingley Dell site you will see that their pigs definitely do have good lives -they are housed outdoors in jolly painted eco huts.  I will definitely be buying more of their lovely meat in the future – as will my neighbour who rushed to buy a piece after seeing some of my photos of the pork cooking last week on Facebook!

Ingredients

2 onions cut into chunks

2 large carrots cut into chunks

8 whole cloves of garlic crushed

Bunch of mixed herbs

2 chillies

Sticky marinade

Juice of a lemon

Desert spoon of dark muscovado sugar

Desert spoon of honey

4 slices in peeled ginger

Tablespoon of dark soy sauce

2 star anise

Small stick of cinamon

Black pepper

What you do is…

Make the sticky marinade by simply combining all the ingredients. Put the chopped vegetables, garlic and herbs in a large tin and put the meat skin side down on top. Slash underside of meat and rub in the sticky marinade. Turn meat over rub olive oil and salt on the skin. Cover with foil and slow roast for 2.5 hours at 160C/Gas mark 4 then remove from over and gently cut of the skin. Turn oven up to 200C/gas mark 7. Cover the meat and leave to rest. Put the cracking on a baking sheet and cook until for another half an hour or so crisp. Serve the crackling with large slices of the meat and the juices from the pan or make a thickened gravy with them if you prefer.

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Debbie Harris

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