What else can you do with a pork belly?

Rotisserie Pork Belly

Besides bacon, is a pork belly good for anything?  That almost seems like heresy - bacon is so good, why would you *want* to do anything else with a pork belly?  The answer, I suppose, is...creativity?  Novelty?  Dare I say...boredom?  Whatever.  Last week rotisserie grilled pork belly was on the menu, and I didn't hear any complaints from Jean :)

I had a nine-pound pork belly without skin that I was preparing to put in cure, so I sliced off about 2 1/2 pounds of it for dinner.  The idea was to roll it up like a roast and then grill it on a spit.  My new Huntington grill has a rotisserie burner and we've been roasting one chicken per week, so it seemed like a good idea to branch out and put something else on the skewer besides poultry.

Brine the Belly

I only brined the pork belly portion for an hour, since this was a last-minute flash of inspiration.  The rule in our house is that dinner absolutely has to be on the table before 8pm, and I estimated that it would take at least two hours to cook this pig.  Although simple, I'll give you the brine recipe just in case this is your first time:

Saltwater Brine
2 Quarts Water
1 Cup Kosher Salt

Combine all ingredients and stir until salt is thoroughly dissolved.  Put meat in brine.  To ensure meat is completely submerged, put a ziplock bag full of water on top, or else push a plate down on top of the meat until it is submerged. Or you can do as I did and just place the brine and the meat in a really big ziploc bag.  Whatever you want to do is OK, as long as the meat is completely surrounded by the brine.

Ideally, you will brine your meat for at least four hours but no more than 12.  These are just guidelines though, and every piece of meat (as well as every cook) is different.

Form the Pellicle

Once the brine is done, take the meat out and rinse it thoroughly, then pat it dry.  At this point, you may choose to leave the meat to sit out and form a pellicle (a dry, slightly sticky exterior).  The pellicle will help smoke particles to adhere to the meat.  You might even set up a fan to blow air across the surface of the meat, which will help the pellicle to form faster.  In my case however, I was looking to get things moving along as quickly as possible so I skipped this step.

Season and Roll the Belly

For the seasoning rub, I placed a combination of herbs and spices in a small food processor to chop and combine.  Here are the seasonings I used:

Herbal Seasoning for Pork Belly
3 large cloves of garlic
1 tsp ground sage
1 tsp fennel seeds
5 bay leaves
2 tsp dried rosemary
1 tsp black pepper
1 Tbsp kosher salt
10 small sprigs of fresh thyme
1 fresh shallot, chopped

Before

After

Place all ingredients in a small food processor and pulse until minced and combined.







Now you are ready to tie up your meat.  Place it on the cutting board, fat side down, with some butcher's string beneath it. I used three pieces of string for mine:

Next, spread your seasoning on the top of the belly using a rubber spatula or wooden spoon.

Then roll up the belly and tie the pieces of string.  Here's a view of  mine from the top:

And from the end: 

The outside of the rolled pork belly is pretty fatty, so this step may be superflous, but I brushed mine with olive oil anyway.  I brush almost everything with olive oil, it's just how I roll.  It certainly can't hurt.  I also like to throw salt on things that aren't slugs, but I skipped the salt on this project because it's already been brined in salt water and too much salt can make things taste bad.

Grill the Pork Belly

You can't eat raw pork belly - it isn't good for you.  So I set up the grill for rotisserie cooking.  For me, this means placing a tray under the meat to catch the juices and turning on the rear rotisserie burner.  The rotisserie burner is a nice option on the grill because it allows you to cook meat on the turning spit without worrying about flare-ups from the grease dripping onto the flames below.  Instead, the flames are at the back of the grill.  This is the first grill I've ever owned that has this feature, and I've used it every week since I got it.  It makes amazing chicken!  Anyway, here is a picture of the grill set up for rotisserie cooking:

I heated the grill to 500 degrees before putting the belly on so that it would get a nice sear.  Here's a shot of the pork belly.  You can see the special rotisserie burner running across the back of the grill:

Here's the belly partway through the cooking time.  Notice all of the drippings in the pan, and the nice crispy exterior forming on the belly.  This is going to be good :P

Eat the Pork Belly

I can't grill corn when using the rotisserie burner, so this corn was boiled.  Iowa sweet corn is the perfect complement to grilled pork belly, I think.  My parents sourced this corn from one of their church friends.  It's called Mister Mini and has really small ears with small, tightly-packed kernels that are very sweet.  Cooking it is almost unncessary, that's how tender and sweet it is!

Some glamour shots of the finished product: 

Bailey and Hershey were literally vibrating while I cut into this succulent roast and plated it.  Unfortunately, there were no leftovers for them.  Poor puppies!