Pork Belly with Silverbeet and Roast Garlic

Whenever I used to think of Pork Belly I thought it would be too hard to prepare. There are a ton of recipes out there with all sorts off different kinds of ways to cook it. The way I've done it here is pretty simple and also pretty hard to screw up.

The Pork Belly can be with the bone in or out. Doesn't matter. If you are buying it from the butcher make sure the skin has been scored. If not then ask them to do this for you. If you buy it from the supermarket it will always be scored, I'm pretty sure. If not no big deal you can do this yourself at home.

This dish takes about 2.5 hours to cook however...

Ingredients:

1-1.5kg of Pork Belly
3 Bulbs of Garlic
Enough Silverbeet for 3 people (about 4 big stalks)
2x medium to large Red Onions
Salt and Pepper
Extra Virgin Olive Oil

First thing you want to do as soon as you walk into the kitchen is turn on your oven and put it up to max heat. (Even before you crank your favourite tunes and pour your glass of red)

Get your piece of pork belly and with skin side up you want to salt the skin. If the skin hasn't been scored then with a really sharp knife run lines along the skin one centimetre apart. Go deep into the fat but be careful not to go all the way down to the meaty part.

Use lots of salt. Lots of salt people. Really get it into the cracks. Turn the pork belly over and lightly salt and pepper the underside of it.

Place the pork belly in the middle of a roasting tray and put in the oven. Your oven should be at full temp by now but if it's not then wait until it is before you put the pork belly in.

After 30 mins turn the temp down to 180°C. Leave it in the oven now for another 50mins.

The first 30 mins at the high temp will get the crackling really nice. Oh how it will crackle. At this point it should look something like this:

While the pork belly is in the oven you can prepare the silverbeet, garlic and onions.

Take your stalks of silverbeet and cut out the white base of the stalk so you only have the green leafy part of the silverbeet left. Then chop it up into big chunks and put to the side.

Cut your red onion length ways down the middle into about half an inch thick:

Take your whole garlic bulbs and cut the top 8th off them:

After the 50mins is up on the pork belly take it out of the oven. Move the pork to one side of the pan and place the red onion circles in the middle of the pan in one layer. Place the pork belly back on top of the red onion.

Place the bulbs around the pork and pour a generous amount of olive oil right on top and into the garlic.

Put the tray back in the oven and cook for a further 1 hour.

Once the pork, onions and garlic have been in the oven for about an hour take them out and cover with tin foil and let rest. It should look something like this coming out of the oven:

Just before you get the pork out of the oven put on a pan with a couple of inches of water in it on a high heat. Once the water starts to boil drop in the chopped silverbeet and put on a lid. This is an easy way to steam your silverbeet.

Let the silverbeet steam for about 5 mins.

Take your pork belly out of the pan and cut up into one inch pieces length ways. On your plate put some of the onions, pork belly, a garlic bulb and some of the steamed silverbeet.

Season with salt and pepper. You can also add a small squeeze of lemon juice over the silverbeet if your that way inclined.

This dish is so nice as every few mouthfuls you should have a clove of the roasted garlic which is delicious! If you like you can also have a dollop of dijon mustard to go with the pork.

Delish.