This
dish was a surprise.
I had put doing it off, despite being greatly interested in
the eating of it, after being scared off by the 18 hours cooking time.
“Eighteen hours!” I thought, “How would you manage that!”
The
big surprise came in two things… one… it was one of the easier Heston dishes.
And, in terms of actual cook-doing-cooking time… it didn’t take much actual
time, but near enough to 42 hours elapsed time. It’s kind of a ‘hurry up and wait’ dish.
And,
because I am feeling terribly kind, I’m going include in this dish WHEN I did
everything, so all the timing is laid out for you.You're welcome.
Is
all this long-time ahead prep worth it? Well.. sorry to give away the best
line, but.. one guest called it “the best pork I’ve ever eaten.”
Prep Ahead dinner party:
We
had: (Heston dishes marked with a *)
- Prawn cocktails*, with from scratch Mayonnaise* and Soy-marinated roe*
- Braised pork belly with cracking*, pommes puree* (mk2), braised lettuce* and steamed carrots.
- Coffee creme brulee*
Braised Pork Belly with Crackling
Heston Blumenthal at Home
Process:
1. Prepare the spiced brine
2. Brine the pork belly
3. Braise pork belly
4. Cook crackling
5. Cool pork belly, strain off veg
6. Prep sauce
7. Warm pork belly to serve
It might look like a lot, but most of those steps take less
than 15 minutes of actual chef time. The down side though? The elapsed time of
many of those steps is measured in hours….
Let’s see how it is done, shall we?
The times I am
working on assumes you want to serve this for Saturday night. I’ll indicate
when I did them in italics like this.
Prepare the spiced brine
(Thursday evening)
So if you’ve made brine before you’d be aware, it is just
very salty water. Soaking meat in brine makes it more tender when you cook it.
(Just remember to wash the brine off before cooking, or its really
salty). In order to add flavour to this dish, Heston also adds spices to this
mix. A salty tea to soak in. Like its own day spa.
Before putting them in the water, you roast them. This is
not difficult. Look.
Put spices in dish.
Roast them in oven.
Whizz them up a bit.
Add them into a tea bag muslin with the rosemary,
thyme and zests.
Warm your water, add a large chunk of salt and the
muslin bag until it boils.
Put the whole lot in a bowl and let it cool. Overnight.
Brine the pork belly
First you need to remove the skin from the pork belly, and
put it aside for later. (Thursday night while the brine was warming up).
6.30am Friday morning. Put pork belly in a dish it
will fit (A lasagne tray worked nicely)
and fill the dish with the spiced
brine, discarding the muslin bag. (Or rather discarding the contents, so you
can rewash and reuse the muslin). This goes into the fridge (covered with cling
film) for 12 hours – i.e. after you get home from work.
6.30-7.30pm Friday evening.
Drain off the spiced brine, and
refill the dish with fresh cold water. Replace the cold water every 15 minutes.
Braise the pork
While the pork is rinsing, get the rest of your braising
ingredients together.
Put on the oven to warm now. My oven doesn’t have a 70
degree temp, but some testing with a thermometer found that the “Keep Warm”
setting is 70 degrees on my oven.
Slice up the carrot, onion and leek. Defrost your chicken
stock. I used Heston’s brown chicken stock recipe, and froze the extra. (Method as per this post).
Realise that you large-ish piece of pork belly does not fit nicely into your casserole.
Adapt.
7.30pm Put the pork into your casserole dish (it
needs a lid) add the sliced vegetables and chicken stock.
Pop it in the oven. You may want to put a post it note on
the oven warning fellow housepeople not to touch the oven, as it may look like
it has been left on inadvertently. Go make dinner. You know, the one you will actually eat tonight.
Cook the crackling (part one)
8.30am Saturday morning. Put the pork skin into the
oven on a wire rack. Go about your morning.
1.30pm. Take your pork out of the oven and leave to
cool in the liquid.
Take out the pork skin, which has been cooking for 5 hours, and disappointingly doesn't look like much. Feel a bit sorry for it, but don't say anything in case you hurt its feelings. Put the oven temp up to 240
degrees.
Cook the crackling (part two)
1.45pm Put the pork skin back in the oven for 15 minutes and be
amazed at how much it puffs up and looks amazing. (Clearly a late bloomer).
Cool pork belly, strain off veg
4.30pm. Take the pork out of the cooled liquid and set
aside. It looked a bit... wet. And sad.
Strain the liquid.
Set some aside.
Prep sauce
Reduce the remainder by 2/3s. Trick I figured out – check
the depth using a chopstick before you start, then you know when you’ve reduced
it enough.
Warm pork belly to serve
20 minutes before you want to eat, heat the reserved stock
liquid in a pan and pop in your pork.
2 minutes before carving. Dry it off on some paper, putting
any leftover liquid in with the reduced liquid from before. Then quickly brown
the top in a frypan in a little oil. (I just cleaned out the pan I had used to heat
it up in).
Carve it into thick slices and serve it with the pommes
puree and buttered lettuce. Bask in the adulation.
Things I learned:
- Not everything good needs be painful.
- Spiced brine definitely added some nice flavour there.
Guest verdicts:
- “This is the best pork I’ve ever had.”
- “Gee, that pork is good, isn’t it.” (From my laconic father in law. Gold, I tell you, gold.)
- (The pork crackle was happily devoured by the two guests who like it with much pleasure, who felt that the rest of us not eating it was only a good thing).
Verdict:
- The pork was very, very tender, with excellent flavour and no fattiness (like I’ve occasionally experienced in some restaurants). It wasn’t a “sticky” style pork belly, just very tender and great pork flavour. Sauce was nice, again just adding flavour without any fuss.
- Pork crackle was the best I’ve ever done (I have a bad history with pork crackle). I was surprised at it not needing any salt – I had always thought it didn’t put enough salt on – just that combo of long time at low plus short time at very high and it was very light, airy and zero oiliness.
- This was an excellent and relatively painless dish. You could prepare it a reasonable distance ahead (day before you wanted it) too. As a guest noted, it would be excellent for something like Christmas, where you wanted the oven during the day.
- I am seriously considering including this as staple main course for those dinner parties where I wanted to do something complicated for dessert – the ultimate set and forget mains.
Next : Heston’s Coffee Brulee!
