February 17, 2025 • 17 mins
How did a Jewish boy from New York become so enamored with pork belly?
Well, you probably know some of the answers. But Bruce is here (without Mark, who still has a broken leg) to tell you about his crush on pork belly, the most luxurious of all pork cuts.
He's also got a one-minute cooking tip as well as something that's making him happy in food this week.
Here are the segments for this episode of COOKING WITH BRUCE & MARK:
[00:25] Our one-minute cooking tip: Keep a toothbrush in the kitchen for cleaning things (but not your mouth!).
[01:39] Bruce's wild relationship with pork belly!
[16:08] What’s making Bruce happy in food this week? Braised Brisket!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Hey, I'm Bruce Weinstein, and this isthe podcast Cooking with Bruce and Mark.
And Mark is still recovering, so this weekit's just the podcast Cooking with Bruce.
I've got a one minute cooking tip.
I'm going to talk about myrelationship with pork belly.
Yep.
And I'm going to tell you what'smaking me happy in food this week.
So let's get started.
(00:25):
Our one minute cooking tip.
Keep a toothbrush in the kitchen.
Yep, and not for brushing yourteeth at the kitchen sink.
That's actually a little disgusting,But it's a great cleaning tool for tight
spaces like waffle irons or between thegrids on a grill pan It's also great for
scrubbing stubborn dirt off of potatoesand other sturdy vegetables like winter
(00:47):
squash and the outside of melons So justlike you change a toothbrush in your
mouth every few months Yes, you should bechanging your toothbrush every few months.
Do the same thing with thetoothbrush in the kitchen.
before I get to the next segmentof this podcast, I want to thank
you for listening to Cooking withBruce and Mark and for supporting
(01:10):
this podcast by giving us a review.
Please go to wherever it is thatyou get your podcasts and leave
us a review, give us a rating.
Maybe I can even ask for five stars.
Why not?
Mark does all the time.
And that's what reallyhelps us with the analytics.
We are not funded in any other way.
So we do appreciate you giving usthose reviews and do appreciate
(01:33):
your time that it takes to do that.
And also love that you're here listeningand with us on this cooking journey.
Okay, my relationship with pork belly.
As a New York Jewish kid, you'd thinkthat I'd have little relationship
with pork belly, but You'd be wrong.
Well, sort of.
(01:54):
My relationship was with bacon.
And it's really funny because when I talkto other people about their relationship
with bacon, especially Jewish kids, Jewishpeople, they never ate bacon as a kid.
What I hear was that baconwas like the forbidden thing.
They might even eat bologna and hamat lunch, but they never ate bacon.
(02:15):
My house, we ate bacon.
We never ate ham.
In fact, Growing up, ham was themost Christian of all your meats.
In fact, I didn't even know that, like,smoked ham existed until I was a teenager.
We went to some cousin'shouse on Long Island.
This is my mother's family.
And they had served asmoked spiral cut ham.
(02:36):
And my mother and her mother were bothOutraged that this cousin would do it.
And once I tasted it, I didn'tspeak to them both for a week
because I was so angry that they'dkept that from me for so long, but
bacon was a big thing in our house.
Look, it was even a big thingin that grandmother's house
who was upset with the ham.
And she only bought kosher meat.
(02:58):
She had meat dishes and dairy dishes.
But I guess, you know, her idea ofkosher was a separate pan for the bacon
because my grandfather insisted on bacon.
He was not kosher at all.
He did not come from a religiousfamily the way she did.
So she had bacon for him, but it wasin a separate pan and that's bacon
and it's smoked and it's succulent.
(03:19):
And for a lot of peoplewho don't even realize it.
Bacon is pork belly, right?
It's just the pork belly thathas been smoked, and then
usually you buy it sliced.
You can buy chunks of bacon,but usually you buy it sliced.
Now, plain pork belly islike a whole other animal.
The unsmoked kind of pork belly.
(03:39):
And it's used in cuisinesall over the world.
It's used in Germany, it's used in France,the French eat it as charcuterie, it gets
boiled in pâte au feu, it gets roasted.
but you probably are going to seeit more in Asian culture and even
though as a family when I was a kid wewent to Chinatown a lot for dinners.
(04:02):
We went all the time and myparents loved Cantonese food.
It was a battle we had all the timebecause I wanted to go into a Sichuan
restaurant and a Hunan restaurantand I wanted desperately to try hot
chilis and hot foods that I read about,but they wanted to have chow mein.
They wanted to haveshrimp in lobster sauce.
(04:25):
Again, you see, we weren'tkosher, but we didn't eat ham.
Really weird.
And we didn't eat pork belly,except for the bacon kind.
But shrimp in lobster sauce is athing because there's no lobster.
It's basically shrimp in the kindof sauce you would serve with
lobster if you were serving lobster.
And that is totally an AmericanizedChinese dish if I ever heard one.
(04:46):
So we went there and I never gotto eat pork belly and I didn't
discover that pork belly was a thinguntil I went for my first Chinese
cooking lesson at about age 18.
I took these classes at the new schoolwhich is still around, new school
in New York, and the guy teachingit was, get this, Norman Weinstein.
(05:09):
was the late 70s and only thencould someone named Norman Weinstein
be the Chinese cooking expert.
That is not going to happen today.
No relation, Weinstein, but no relation.
And I have to say, I didn't love it.
The first time he brought inthis giant slab of pork belly,
all I saw was all of that fat.
(05:30):
Now, of course, bacon has thesame amount of fat as pork belly,
but when you cook the slices ofbacon, the fat renders out, right?
And it shrinks down and youhave the crunchy, crunchy bits
that are left where the fat was.
And this Pork belly that wasn'tsmoked was just way too fatty for me.
And I had this thing about fat in mylate teens all the way up to my 40s.
(05:55):
I didn't eat fat.
It upset my stomach.
I didn't like it.
I just had this aversionto big chunks of fat.
I wouldn't eat chuck roast.
When Mark moved in, And he was agreat cook, and he found out that I
was making wolf bourguignon with topround, not even bottom round, but
top round, because I didn't like fat.
He nearly lost his mind.
(06:16):
And then, he discovered thejoys of Chinese delivery.
And, my God, you have to reallylive in New York to understand
the joys of Chinese food delivery.
But, I never Let himget anything deep fried.
He always said, oh, let's try orangebeef for General Tsav's chicken.
I was like, that is nothing butdeep fried gristle and fat chunks.
(06:38):
We're getting white meat chicken.
I would yell at them on the phone that Iwanted a stir fried and not deep fried.
And the poor thing, poor Mark, henever got any of that until much later.
But now.
Pork belly has become one of my goto meats for all sorts of dishes.
Yes, I have overcome my aversion to fat.
I love fried chicken.
(06:58):
I love pork fat.
I like chuck.
I like everything that's gelatinousand rich and fatty and oily and yum.
So, pork belly has become one of mygo to meats for all sorts of dishes.
A lot of Asian dishes, of course,but also dishes that don't
require soy sauce or fish sauce.
(07:19):
Like, for one thing I love toroast pork belly and serve it
with a French lentil salad.
For this, I actually preferpork belly without the skin.
So if you're buying pork belly and it hasthe skin, you can ask them to cut it off.
Or you could just slice it off at home.
Just try not to get too much fatoff as you slice the skin off.
(07:40):
A lot of salt, a lot of pepper.
I put it on a rack on a roasting pan.
350 degrees on convection if you have it.
A one pound piece or one and a halfpound piece is going to take about 45
minutes to get crispy on the top andbrown and the fat is rendering out.
Inside is juicy and I serveit with a French lentil salad.
(08:03):
And what I mean by that arethose little green lentil dupuis.
I boil those, I strain them,and then to make a dressing.
And this is the best part becauseit's a double pork belly dish.
To dress the lentils, I'm gonna chopup some bacon, yeah, some smoked pork
belly, render that out, then with allof that fat in the pan, and the crispy
(08:24):
bacon pieces, I'm gonna throw in a littlebit of shallots, and some diced carrot,
and some diced celery, and saute thatin that bacon fat till they just start
to soften, throw in some Dijon mustard,a little Worcestershire, then deglaze
that pan with some white wine vinegar,Dump all of that into the lentils.
(08:45):
And that is your French lentil salad.
Serve it with a pork belly and do notsee a cardiologist for at least a month.
But there is something.
You can get in every French bistro thathas pork belly in it, the smoked kind.
Salad au lardon.
Well, what is lardon in French?
Bacon.
And to make a salad au lardon, you takethe bacon chunks and you toss them,
(09:08):
in this case, with frisee lettuce,and you make a dressing with all the
bacon fat that was in the pan andyou grate some parmesan over the top
and it is an amazing dish especiallywhen you top it with a poached egg.
So those are the non Asian waysthat I like to make pork belly.
Let's talk about some ofmy favorite Asian dishes.
(09:34):
You could braise pork belly with soysauce and rice wine and spices and that's
usually called red cooking pork belly.
You could also do twice cooked pork whereyou boil the pork belly and then you
slice it up and then you stir fry it.
with leeks and with fermented chilisauce, and crispy skin pork belly.
(09:54):
This is kind of an Asian version ofthat roasted plain pork belly that
I did with the French lentil salad.
So for crispy skin pork belly,you want to take your one and a
half to two pound piece of porkbelly and leave the skin on it.
Then rub salt.
all over it and set it in therefrigerator uncovered overnight.
(10:18):
That salt is going to draw so muchmoisture out of the skin and out
of the pork that it's going to helpit get crispier , the next day you
wipe all the salt and moisture offof that, turn it upside down, score
it in an X pattern through the meat,but not down all the way to the skin.
Rub some five spice powder into that.
(10:39):
Okay, turn it back.
You've got to take a lot oftoothpicks or the sharp points of a
carving fork, and you want to skin.
You want to stab it and stab it andstab it like a hundred holes at least.
You want to allow places for thefat to come up, for it to render
out, for that to get super crispy.
So the skin's been salted, the skinhas been wiped, the skin has been
(11:03):
poked, and now the skin is going toget rubbed with a little vinegar.
Now you have to put the pork belly on apiece of foil and fold the foil up just
so it covers the sides of the pork bellybut leaves the top totally uncovered.
Now put that piece of foil withthe pork belly in it on a tray.
Put that in the oven at about 325 degrees.
(11:26):
Oh, for about an hour.
hour and then crank the oven up atthat point to 450 and you are going
to watch that skin bubble up andget crispy and turn into something
that looks almost deep fried.
that takes maybe 10minutes at the high heat.
So you really want to be carefuland watch it and make sure it
doesn't burn but it does bubble up.
(11:47):
Okay, I talked aboutred cooking pork belly.
So I have to tell you how I do it.
Cut the pork belly into 1 to 112 inch cubes with the skin on.
Bring a large pot of water to a boil.
Throw in those cubes of porkbelly and you're going to let them
boil for about 5 to 7 minutes.
Skim off any scum that comes to the topof that pot and then drain the pork belly
(12:11):
and put them on a tray and let them cool.
Very common when you're braising meatin Chinese cooking you will boil it
first to get some impurities out beforeyou actually start the real cooking.
Now we're going to take aboutfour tablespoons of sugar.
If you have access to rocksugar, Asian yellow or white
(12:32):
rock sugar, you can use that.
I dissolve that in about fourtablespoons of water in a skillet,
and I'm going to caramelize that.
I do it in a nonstick skillet.
It makes it a little easier.
And you're literally just going toboil that until the sugar turns golden
brown, smells like burnt caramel.
Now, when it gets to thatpoint, you throw the cooled.
(12:56):
Pork belly cubes into that panwith the caramel and toss it
around and take it off the heat.
Now transfer that pork bellytossed in caramel into either a
dutch oven or if you have a claypot, that's the best thing to use.
Throw them in a clay pot.
You're going to put in a couple of staranise, a cinnamon stick, few tablespoons
(13:18):
of chopped up ginger, three or fourgarlic cloves, oh, and four or five
scallions cut into one or two inch pieces.
Pour over that about a quartercup of Chinese cooking wine,
about a quarter cup of soy sauce,and then the rest with water.
Bring that to a simmer and let thatsimmer for about an hour and 20 minutes
(13:40):
or until the pork belly is pretty tender.
Skim the fat.
Raise the heat, boil that down so thesauce is a little bit thicker, and
that is amazing red cooking pork belly.
You know, a friend emailed me the otherday and said Mark had mentioned in
his book discussion group that she'spart of, that I had made him pork
belly for dinner and she wanted toknow more about where to find it and
(14:03):
what to look for when she's buying it.
So here's what I told her.
I have three pork bellyoutlets in my life.
One is Costco.
Yep.
At least the Costco by me alwayshas pork belly and it's kind of
interesting the way they sell it.
Each package is about four to five poundsof pork belly, which has been cut into
(14:26):
two inch wide, but long strips, eachstrip being about a pound and a half.
That's really good for roasting.
It's really good for some of these dishes,but it doesn't have the skin on it.
So if the skin is importantto you, then that's probably
not the best place to get it.
You can go to an Asian market.
(14:46):
The one I go to always has two poundpieces of pork belly with the skin on it.
They're the perfect size foralmost everything I need to do.
The third outlet I have is a local farm.
Shout out once again to Howling FlatsFarm in North Canaan, Connecticut.
The pork belly there is amazing.
The meat is organic.
The only problem was the last timeI called and asked for pork belly.
(15:09):
All they had were the giant10 pound sides of pork belly.
So I had to buy the whole thing,thawed it, cut it into pieces,
shrink wrapped it, and refroze it.
And yes, you can thaw meat andrefreeze it, but there is a rule to it.
If you've thawed it in thefridge, it's okay to refreeze it.
(15:31):
If you have thawed the meaton the counter or anywhere.
That is higher than 40 degrees . Itis not safe to refreeze it.
And it is never safe to refreezeground meat of any kind.
So, that's my take on pork belly.
It is one of my favorite things.
I hope you A lot of our bookshave pork belly recipes.
(15:54):
Check them out.
And if you're making something amazingwith pork belly, go to our Facebook group,
Cooking with Bruce and Mark, and share it.
Show a picture.
Tell us what you made.
I want to know about yourrelationship with pork belly.
Okay.
What's making me happy in food this week?
Brisket, a classic Jewish food.
(16:14):
I went to Costco and I gotthis giant 20 pound brisket.
This is the biggest thing I've ever seen.
And I cut it into four five poundroasts and I braised one last night
with red wine and and carrots and sweetonions and mushrooms and fresh herbs.
I put a little tomato pasteand Worcestershire in it.
(16:36):
It was absolutely amazing.
Mark asked for mashed potatoes withit, which he got because with his
broken leg, he gets what he wants.
And brisket was making mehappy in food this week.
That's it for today's episode.
We talked about brisket.
We talked about pork belly and we talkedabout toothbrushes kept in your kitchen.
(16:56):
Thanks for joining me.
Please share your thoughts aboutfood at our website, bruceandmark.
com or on our Facebook grouppage, cooking with Bruce and Mark
and don't forget to subscribe.
So you don't miss a single episodeof cooking with Bruce and Mark.
Hey, I'm Bruce Weinstein, and this isthe podcast Cooking with Bruce and Mark.
And Mark is still recovering, so this weekit's just the podcast Cooking with Bruce.
I've got a one minute cooking tip.
I'm going to talk about myrelationship with pork belly.
Yep.
And I'm going to tell you what'smaking me happy in food this week.
So let's get started.
(00:25):
Our one minute cooking tip.
Keep a toothbrush in the kitchen.
Yep, and not for brushing yourteeth at the kitchen sink.
That's actually a little disgusting,But it's a great cleaning tool for tight
spaces like waffle irons or between thegrids on a grill pan It's also great for
scrubbing stubborn dirt off of potatoesand other sturdy vegetables like winter
(00:47):
squash and the outside of melons So justlike you change a toothbrush in your
mouth every few months Yes, you should bechanging your toothbrush every few months.
Do the same thing with thetoothbrush in the kitchen.
before I get to the next segmentof this podcast, I want to thank
you for listening to Cooking withBruce and Mark and for supporting
(01:10):
this podcast by giving us a review.
Please go to wherever it is thatyou get your podcasts and leave
us a review, give us a rating.
Maybe I can even ask for five stars.
Why not?
Mark does all the time.
And that's what reallyhelps us with the analytics.
We are not funded in any other way.
So we do appreciate you giving usthose reviews and do appreciate
(01:33):
your time that it takes to do that.
And also love that you're here listeningand with us on this cooking journey.
Okay, my relationship with pork belly.
As a New York Jewish kid, you'd thinkthat I'd have little relationship
with pork belly, but You'd be wrong.
Well, sort of.
(01:54):
My relationship was with bacon.
And it's really funny because when I talkto other people about their relationship
with bacon, especially Jewish kids, Jewishpeople, they never ate bacon as a kid.
What I hear was that baconwas like the forbidden thing.
They might even eat bologna and hamat lunch, but they never ate bacon.
(02:15):
My house, we ate bacon.
We never ate ham.
In fact, Growing up, ham was themost Christian of all your meats.
In fact, I didn't even know that, like,smoked ham existed until I was a teenager.
We went to some cousin'shouse on Long Island.
This is my mother's family.
And they had served asmoked spiral cut ham.
(02:36):
And my mother and her mother were bothOutraged that this cousin would do it.
And once I tasted it, I didn'tspeak to them both for a week
because I was so angry that they'dkept that from me for so long, but
bacon was a big thing in our house.
Look, it was even a big thingin that grandmother's house
who was upset with the ham.
And she only bought kosher meat.
(02:58):
She had meat dishes and dairy dishes.
But I guess, you know, her idea ofkosher was a separate pan for the bacon
because my grandfather insisted on bacon.
He was not kosher at all.
He did not come from a religiousfamily the way she did.
So she had bacon for him, but it wasin a separate pan and that's bacon
and it's smoked and it's succulent.
(03:19):
And for a lot of peoplewho don't even realize it.
Bacon is pork belly, right?
It's just the pork belly thathas been smoked, and then
usually you buy it sliced.
You can buy chunks of bacon,but usually you buy it sliced.
Now, plain pork belly islike a whole other animal.
The unsmoked kind of pork belly.
(03:39):
And it's used in cuisinesall over the world.
It's used in Germany, it's used in France,the French eat it as charcuterie, it gets
boiled in pâte au feu, it gets roasted.
but you probably are going to seeit more in Asian culture and even
though as a family when I was a kid wewent to Chinatown a lot for dinners.
(04:02):
We went all the time and myparents loved Cantonese food.
It was a battle we had all the timebecause I wanted to go into a Sichuan
restaurant and a Hunan restaurantand I wanted desperately to try hot
chilis and hot foods that I read about,but they wanted to have chow mein.
They wanted to haveshrimp in lobster sauce.
(04:25):
Again, you see, we weren'tkosher, but we didn't eat ham.
Really weird.
And we didn't eat pork belly,except for the bacon kind.
But shrimp in lobster sauce is athing because there's no lobster.
It's basically shrimp in the kindof sauce you would serve with
lobster if you were serving lobster.
And that is totally an AmericanizedChinese dish if I ever heard one.
(04:46):
So we went there and I never gotto eat pork belly and I didn't
discover that pork belly was a thinguntil I went for my first Chinese
cooking lesson at about age 18.
I took these classes at the new schoolwhich is still around, new school
in New York, and the guy teachingit was, get this, Norman Weinstein.
(05:09):
was the late 70s and only thencould someone named Norman Weinstein
be the Chinese cooking expert.
That is not going to happen today.
No relation, Weinstein, but no relation.
And I have to say, I didn't love it.
The first time he brought inthis giant slab of pork belly,
all I saw was all of that fat.
(05:30):
Now, of course, bacon has thesame amount of fat as pork belly,
but when you cook the slices ofbacon, the fat renders out, right?
And it shrinks down and youhave the crunchy, crunchy bits
that are left where the fat was.
And this Pork belly that wasn'tsmoked was just way too fatty for me.
And I had this thing about fat in mylate teens all the way up to my 40s.
(05:55):
I didn't eat fat.
It upset my stomach.
I didn't like it.
I just had this aversionto big chunks of fat.
I wouldn't eat chuck roast.
When Mark moved in, And he was agreat cook, and he found out that I
was making wolf bourguignon with topround, not even bottom round, but
top round, because I didn't like fat.
He nearly lost his mind.
(06:16):
And then, he discovered thejoys of Chinese delivery.
And, my God, you have to reallylive in New York to understand
the joys of Chinese food delivery.
But, I never Let himget anything deep fried.
He always said, oh, let's try orangebeef for General Tsav's chicken.
I was like, that is nothing butdeep fried gristle and fat chunks.
(06:38):
We're getting white meat chicken.
I would yell at them on the phone that Iwanted a stir fried and not deep fried.
And the poor thing, poor Mark, henever got any of that until much later.
But now.
Pork belly has become one of my goto meats for all sorts of dishes.
Yes, I have overcome my aversion to fat.
I love fried chicken.
(06:58):
I love pork fat.
I like chuck.
I like everything that's gelatinousand rich and fatty and oily and yum.
So, pork belly has become one of mygo to meats for all sorts of dishes.
A lot of Asian dishes, of course,but also dishes that don't
require soy sauce or fish sauce.
(07:19):
Like, for one thing I love toroast pork belly and serve it
with a French lentil salad.
For this, I actually preferpork belly without the skin.
So if you're buying pork belly and it hasthe skin, you can ask them to cut it off.
Or you could just slice it off at home.
Just try not to get too much fatoff as you slice the skin off.
(07:40):
A lot of salt, a lot of pepper.
I put it on a rack on a roasting pan.
350 degrees on convection if you have it.
A one pound piece or one and a halfpound piece is going to take about 45
minutes to get crispy on the top andbrown and the fat is rendering out.
Inside is juicy and I serveit with a French lentil salad.
(08:03):
And what I mean by that arethose little green lentil dupuis.
I boil those, I strain them,and then to make a dressing.
And this is the best part becauseit's a double pork belly dish.
To dress the lentils, I'm gonna chopup some bacon, yeah, some smoked pork
belly, render that out, then with allof that fat in the pan, and the crispy
(08:24):
bacon pieces, I'm gonna throw in a littlebit of shallots, and some diced carrot,
and some diced celery, and saute thatin that bacon fat till they just start
to soften, throw in some Dijon mustard,a little Worcestershire, then deglaze
that pan with some white wine vinegar,Dump all of that into the lentils.
(08:45):
And that is your French lentil salad.
Serve it with a pork belly and do notsee a cardiologist for at least a month.
But there is something.
You can get in every French bistro thathas pork belly in it, the smoked kind.
Salad au lardon.
Well, what is lardon in French?
Bacon.
And to make a salad au lardon, you takethe bacon chunks and you toss them,
(09:08):
in this case, with frisee lettuce,and you make a dressing with all the
bacon fat that was in the pan andyou grate some parmesan over the top
and it is an amazing dish especiallywhen you top it with a poached egg.
So those are the non Asian waysthat I like to make pork belly.
Let's talk about some ofmy favorite Asian dishes.
(09:34):
You could braise pork belly with soysauce and rice wine and spices and that's
usually called red cooking pork belly.
You could also do twice cooked pork whereyou boil the pork belly and then you
slice it up and then you stir fry it.
with leeks and with fermented chilisauce, and crispy skin pork belly.
(09:54):
This is kind of an Asian version ofthat roasted plain pork belly that
I did with the French lentil salad.
So for crispy skin pork belly,you want to take your one and a
half to two pound piece of porkbelly and leave the skin on it.
Then rub salt.
all over it and set it in therefrigerator uncovered overnight.
(10:18):
That salt is going to draw so muchmoisture out of the skin and out
of the pork that it's going to helpit get crispier , the next day you
wipe all the salt and moisture offof that, turn it upside down, score
it in an X pattern through the meat,but not down all the way to the skin.
Rub some five spice powder into that.
(10:39):
Okay, turn it back.
You've got to take a lot oftoothpicks or the sharp points of a
carving fork, and you want to skin.
You want to stab it and stab it andstab it like a hundred holes at least.
You want to allow places for thefat to come up, for it to render
out, for that to get super crispy.
So the skin's been salted, the skinhas been wiped, the skin has been
(11:03):
poked, and now the skin is going toget rubbed with a little vinegar.
Now you have to put the pork belly on apiece of foil and fold the foil up just
so it covers the sides of the pork bellybut leaves the top totally uncovered.
Now put that piece of foil withthe pork belly in it on a tray.
Put that in the oven at about 325 degrees.
(11:26):
Oh, for about an hour.
hour and then crank the oven up atthat point to 450 and you are going
to watch that skin bubble up andget crispy and turn into something
that looks almost deep fried.
that takes maybe 10minutes at the high heat.
So you really want to be carefuland watch it and make sure it
doesn't burn but it does bubble up.
(11:47):
Okay, I talked aboutred cooking pork belly.
So I have to tell you how I do it.
Cut the pork belly into 1 to 112 inch cubes with the skin on.
Bring a large pot of water to a boil.
Throw in those cubes of porkbelly and you're going to let them
boil for about 5 to 7 minutes.
Skim off any scum that comes to the topof that pot and then drain the pork belly
(12:11):
and put them on a tray and let them cool.
Very common when you're braising meatin Chinese cooking you will boil it
first to get some impurities out beforeyou actually start the real cooking.
Now we're going to take aboutfour tablespoons of sugar.
If you have access to rocksugar, Asian yellow or white
(12:32):
rock sugar, you can use that.
I dissolve that in about fourtablespoons of water in a skillet,
and I'm going to caramelize that.
I do it in a nonstick skillet.
It makes it a little easier.
And you're literally just going toboil that until the sugar turns golden
brown, smells like burnt caramel.
Now, when it gets to thatpoint, you throw the cooled.
(12:56):
Pork belly cubes into that panwith the caramel and toss it
around and take it off the heat.
Now transfer that pork bellytossed in caramel into either a
dutch oven or if you have a claypot, that's the best thing to use.
Throw them in a clay pot.
You're going to put in a couple of staranise, a cinnamon stick, few tablespoons
(13:18):
of chopped up ginger, three or fourgarlic cloves, oh, and four or five
scallions cut into one or two inch pieces.
Pour over that about a quartercup of Chinese cooking wine,
about a quarter cup of soy sauce,and then the rest with water.
Bring that to a simmer and let thatsimmer for about an hour and 20 minutes
(13:40):
or until the pork belly is pretty tender.
Skim the fat.
Raise the heat, boil that down so thesauce is a little bit thicker, and
that is amazing red cooking pork belly.
You know, a friend emailed me the otherday and said Mark had mentioned in
his book discussion group that she'spart of, that I had made him pork
belly for dinner and she wanted toknow more about where to find it and
(14:03):
what to look for when she's buying it.
So here's what I told her.
I have three pork bellyoutlets in my life.
One is Costco.
Yep.
At least the Costco by me alwayshas pork belly and it's kind of
interesting the way they sell it.
Each package is about four to five poundsof pork belly, which has been cut into
(14:26):
two inch wide, but long strips, eachstrip being about a pound and a half.
That's really good for roasting.
It's really good for some of these dishes,but it doesn't have the skin on it.
So if the skin is importantto you, then that's probably
not the best place to get it.
You can go to an Asian market.
(14:46):
The one I go to always has two poundpieces of pork belly with the skin on it.
They're the perfect size foralmost everything I need to do.
The third outlet I have is a local farm.
Shout out once again to Howling FlatsFarm in North Canaan, Connecticut.
The pork belly there is amazing.
The meat is organic.
The only problem was the last timeI called and asked for pork belly.
(15:09):
All they had were the giant10 pound sides of pork belly.
So I had to buy the whole thing,thawed it, cut it into pieces,
shrink wrapped it, and refroze it.
And yes, you can thaw meat andrefreeze it, but there is a rule to it.
If you've thawed it in thefridge, it's okay to refreeze it.
(15:31):
If you have thawed the meaton the counter or anywhere.
That is higher than 40 degrees . Itis not safe to refreeze it.
And it is never safe to refreezeground meat of any kind.
So, that's my take on pork belly.
It is one of my favorite things.
I hope you A lot of our bookshave pork belly recipes.
(15:54):
Check them out.
And if you're making something amazingwith pork belly, go to our Facebook group,
Cooking with Bruce and Mark, and share it.
Show a picture.
Tell us what you made.
I want to know about yourrelationship with pork belly.
Okay.
What's making me happy in food this week?
Brisket, a classic Jewish food.
(16:14):
I went to Costco and I gotthis giant 20 pound brisket.
This is the biggest thing I've ever seen.
And I cut it into four five poundroasts and I braised one last night
with red wine and and carrots and sweetonions and mushrooms and fresh herbs.
I put a little tomato pasteand Worcestershire in it.
(16:36):
It was absolutely amazing.
Mark asked for mashed potatoes withit, which he got because with his
broken leg, he gets what he wants.
And brisket was making mehappy in food this week.
That's it for today's episode.
We talked about brisket.
We talked about pork belly and we talkedabout toothbrushes kept in your kitchen.
(16:56):
Thanks for joining me.
Please share your thoughts aboutfood at our website, bruceandmark.
com or on our Facebook grouppage, cooking with Bruce and Mark
and don't forget to subscribe.
So you don't miss a single episodeof cooking with Bruce and Mark.
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