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Crispy Chinese Roast Pork Belly is a crowd pleaser. You will find these large slabs of crispy roast pork in the windows of restaurants in Chinatown, usually hanging next to some roast ducks.

It is one of those uncomplicated recipes that you can make at home.

Tip: For the best tasting roast pork, try and source a good piece of free-range pork belly from your local butcher. I like to get free-range rare breed meat as they have a lot more flavour and you will end up with a delicious dish.

Roast pork belly is a regular offering at temples for every religious occasion in Malaysia and most of South East Asia. Big slabs of slow-roasted pork belly or even whole roasted pigs adorn the altar tables in homes and businesses on religious holidays. After the offerings to the gods, the roast pork is then served at a family banquet.

Cantonese style roast pork belly or Siu Yuk

This is a great simple recipe for really crispy Chinese Roast Pork. If you see it in a restaurant, don’t confuse it with the other common roast pork, the sweet and sticky Char Siu. That is quite different, strips of pork loin, marinated in a sweet sauce and roasted.

It is quite common to see both these types of roast pork sold together. In Chinatown, one of the most popular dishes to order is a combination of crispy roast pork and char siu rice.

This recipe uses Chinese flavours like the fragrant five-spice powder but you can leave these out to suit your own taste.

This will make a great Sunday lunch recipe too but be aware that you have to start a few days earlier. This recipe takes a bit of time but with very little effort, you end up with a perfectly roasted belly of pork with crispy crackling and meltingly tender pork.

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Chinese Roast Crispy Pork

Chinese crispy roast pork or siu yoke is one of the favourite roast meats from Chinese restaurants. It is surprisingly easy to make at home.

Prep Time10

Cook Time1 30

Total Time1 40

Course: Main

Cuisine: Chinese

Servings: 4 portions

Ingredients

1.5 kg A piece of skin on belly pork about 1kg to 1.5kg – size to suit number of servings.
Salt
5 spice powder to taste
white vinegar for the skin

Instructions

Preheat oven to 200C/400F/gas 6.
Wash and scrape the skin until clean. Use a sharp fork, a bunch of toothpicks or even the tip of a sharp knife and pierce the skin all over. This helps the fat under the skin to render when roasting. An even piercing will also result in nice even bubbles across the skin and not large blisters when roasting.
Pour over a kettle of boiling water on the skin side of the belly pork and dry it. The boiling water tightens the skin and helps to make the skin crispy later.
Rub about 1 -2 tsp of salt all over, on both the skin and the meat side.
Make some shallow cuts on the meat side, about an inch apart. You will use these cuts as a guide to cut the finished roast pork. On the meat side, sprinkle and rub in 5 tsp of 5 spice powder all over making sure that you get some in the cut crevices.
Leave the pork uncovered in the fridge overnight to dry out skin. This ensures that you get a good crispy skin.
To roast, put the piece of bellypork, skin side up, on a wire rack over a pan of water. This will collect the fat that will be rendered out of the pork while roasting and stop the oil from splattering.
Roast in a hot oven for 1 1/2 hours at 200C.
After 1 hour, brush the skin side with vinegar and put the grill on in the oven as well and watch the skin blister. ( I use the grill and fan oven function for this stage). Let it roast in the oven for another half an hour. (watch out for smoke at this point as it can sometimes trigger the smoke alarm.)
Once raosted and the skin is nicely blistered and golden brown, remove from the oven and rest for 30 minutes. Then cut into smaller pieces for presentations and serve.
You should get a really crispy piece of Chinese Roast Pork with minimal effort.

Notes

Note: If you use a good free-range pork, the pork belly will not shrink as it hasn’t had a lot of added water content. The resulting meat will also taste much better than a bog standard supermarket pork belly.

How to serve crispy roast belly pork

I like to serve this as part of a family meal, with some other dishes like some stir-fried vegetables and maybe a soup.

For a quick lunch, serve the roast pork in a bowl of rice and add some pickles or slices of cucumber on the side.

No meal is complete without a spicy condiment. We usually serve this roast pork with a chilli garlic sauce . This would be the same garlic chilli that goes with Hainanese Chicken Rice.

What to do with leftover roast pork

If you have any of the roast pork left, you can try these recipes.

Cut the pork into small cubes and add it to fried rice.
Roast Pork in Sweet Soya Sauce. This Hokkien recipe is a regular dish in my grandma’s house. Using up the slab of crispy roast pork that was used as an offering on the altar, this makes a very moreish dish from the regular roast pork.

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