Honey & Ginger Pork Belly Recipe
8:12 AM |
My recipe this week incorporated the honey wine and normal honey and some delightful multi-coloured carrots I picked up from the local farmers market. I don’t normally go completely without a recipe but it was oh so cheffy and exciting to make something up based on what I had bought. The experimenting paid off because it was incredibly delicious – like, so delicious we ate the whole thing in one go because we are fatties like that.
One of the best finds was an amazing little honey shop where they had glass hives to watch the bees doing their thing.
Fun fact about bees: A select few bee eggs are fed premium food called ‘Royal Jelly’ which makes them grow into a queen bee. Because more than one egg is being fed Royal Jelly, there are a whole bunch of queens developing. It is up to the first queen that hatches to kill the rest before they hatch and dispute her legitimacy. If two queen bees hatch at the same time they fight to the death. Brutal. You can actually buy Royal Jelly to eat but it is incredibly expensive.
At the honey shop we sampled a whole bunch of different products. Best case scenario would have been to go home with some honey whiskey. It was rather delicious but also rather pricey so we settled for some honey wine. Don’t ask me how they do it but honey wine is made from fermented honey. It was actually the first kind of wine ever invented back in the day. It’s very sweet if slightly confusing.
So, here we go
Honey & Ginger Pork Belly
Time: 15minutes prep and 3hours slow cooking
Serves: Ahem, yes we ate the whole thing but I’m sure a little cut of pork belly could go around 3 skinnies
Ingredients:
Small cut of pork belly (about 800grams)
1/2 cup dessert wine (honey wine in my case)
2 tbsp grated or very finely chopped ginger
2 tbsp honey
A little oil and salt
Directions:
1. Mix the ginger, honey, oil and salt together then massage into the pork belly, making sure to completely slather the mixture over every nook and cranny.
2. Place in a roasting tray and pour in 1/2 cup wine (or more if you are feeling adventurous) along with 1/2 cup of water so it doesn’t dry out.
3. At this point you may want to rub a little extra salt onto the skin so you get lovely crackling. Don’t forget to do this or you will end up having to discard the skin – such a waste of crackling!
4. Place in the oven on a really low heat, about 150-160 degrees and slow cook for about 3 hours (you will need longer for a larger cut of meat).
5. Check it every now and then to make sure there is liquid in the bottom of the tray still.
6. When you’re about 30minutes out from wanting to eat, chuck your vegetables on the stove and switch the oven to grill, turning up the heat to 180 degrees so the top gets nice and crunchy.
You could make a gravy by reserving the juices from the roasting dish, adding a few tsps of flour or corn flour and 1/2cup of water and heating on the stove. It should thicken up and make a delicious gravy. Because I was away from home I didn’t have access to flour so just spooned a little of the juices over the meat to serve.
I cut it into smaller portions to serve and can’t even describe how yummy it was. I know pork belly is delicious to begin with but honey and ginger is such a classic combination and the intensity of the honey wine gave it just the right alcoholic kick to take it to the next level.
 |
| Honey & Ginger Pork Belly |
One of the best finds was an amazing little honey shop where they had glass hives to watch the bees doing their thing.
Fun fact about bees: A select few bee eggs are fed premium food called ‘Royal Jelly’ which makes them grow into a queen bee. Because more than one egg is being fed Royal Jelly, there are a whole bunch of queens developing. It is up to the first queen that hatches to kill the rest before they hatch and dispute her legitimacy. If two queen bees hatch at the same time they fight to the death. Brutal. You can actually buy Royal Jelly to eat but it is incredibly expensive.
At the honey shop we sampled a whole bunch of different products. Best case scenario would have been to go home with some honey whiskey. It was rather delicious but also rather pricey so we settled for some honey wine. Don’t ask me how they do it but honey wine is made from fermented honey. It was actually the first kind of wine ever invented back in the day. It’s very sweet if slightly confusing.
So, here we go
Honey & Ginger Pork Belly
Time: 15minutes prep and 3hours slow cooking
Serves: Ahem, yes we ate the whole thing but I’m sure a little cut of pork belly could go around 3 skinnies
Ingredients:
Small cut of pork belly (about 800grams)
1/2 cup dessert wine (honey wine in my case)
2 tbsp grated or very finely chopped ginger
2 tbsp honey
A little oil and salt
Directions:
1. Mix the ginger, honey, oil and salt together then massage into the pork belly, making sure to completely slather the mixture over every nook and cranny.
2. Place in a roasting tray and pour in 1/2 cup wine (or more if you are feeling adventurous) along with 1/2 cup of water so it doesn’t dry out.
3. At this point you may want to rub a little extra salt onto the skin so you get lovely crackling. Don’t forget to do this or you will end up having to discard the skin – such a waste of crackling!
4. Place in the oven on a really low heat, about 150-160 degrees and slow cook for about 3 hours (you will need longer for a larger cut of meat).
5. Check it every now and then to make sure there is liquid in the bottom of the tray still.
6. When you’re about 30minutes out from wanting to eat, chuck your vegetables on the stove and switch the oven to grill, turning up the heat to 180 degrees so the top gets nice and crunchy.
You could make a gravy by reserving the juices from the roasting dish, adding a few tsps of flour or corn flour and 1/2cup of water and heating on the stove. It should thicken up and make a delicious gravy. Because I was away from home I didn’t have access to flour so just spooned a little of the juices over the meat to serve.
I cut it into smaller portions to serve and can’t even describe how yummy it was. I know pork belly is delicious to begin with but honey and ginger is such a classic combination and the intensity of the honey wine gave it just the right alcoholic kick to take it to the next level.
0 comments:
Post a Comment