Month: January 2023

Heo Quay — Crispy Roasted Pig Belly

Writ­ten Jan­u­ary 23, 2023, updat­ed Jan 31, 2025

First attempt
Beau­ti­ful crispy skin, but over­cooked

2nd attempt
Deli­cious but no crispy skin 🙁

What

Crispy-skinned roast­ed pork bel­ly

Ingredients

2–3lb slab  Pork Bel­ly

1 Tbsp  Gar­lic, minced or crushed

2 Tbsp  Shaox­ing Wine

½ Tbsp  Hoisin Sauce

½ Tbsp  Oys­ter Sauce

¼ tsp  Salt

¼ tsp  Sug­ar

¼ tsp  Pep­per

pinch — ⅛ tsp  5‑Spice Pow­der

Kosher Salt/Vinegar

Time

20 minute Prep, 4 hours – Overnight Mar­i­nate, 1–2 hour Cook

Prep

  • Turn pork bel­ly skin side down onto some paper tow­els
  • Cut ver­ti­cal lines into the meat, mak­ing sure NOT to cut into the fat for the mari­nade
  • In a sep­a­rate bowl, mix Soy Sauce (1 Tbsp), Gar­lic (3 cloves, crushed or minced), Salt, Sug­ar, Pep­per (¼ tsp each), 5‑Spice Pow­der (pinch — ⅛ tsp), Hoisin Sauce (½ Tbsp), Oys­ter Sauce (½ Tbsp), and Shaox­ing Wine (2 Tbsp)

Option­al: Before prepar­ing meat, mix the Gar­lic (3 cloves, crushed) with But­ter (2–3 Tbsp, soft­ened or melt­ed). If melt­ed, then allow to solid­i­fy overnight in refrig­er­a­tor, if soft­ened, then mix togeth­er. This helps the mix­ture stick to the meat

  • Taste and alter if nec­es­sary (it should be more saucy than liq­uidy)
  • Rub the Spice Mix­ture into the meat, mak­ing sure NOT to get any on the skin
  • Place it meat side down into a bak­ing dish or plate

Option­al: Cre­ate a dish the size of your Pork slab out of Foil, fold­ing up the sides to hold in the sauce close to the meat. Place a piece of Plas­tic Wrap inside of that, then place the meat and any sauces meat-side-down into it

  • Dry the skin with a tow­el (needs to be dry)

3 Choic­es:

Rub with a sprin­kle of salt

Light­ly brush on a salt/vinegar mix

Just dry it

  • Place UNCOVERED in the refrig­er­a­tor 4 hours or overnight (prefer­able). The goal here is to get the skin super dry

Cooking Day

  • Pre­heat oven to 400F degrees Roast set­ting
  • Dry the skin
  • Line a bak­ing sheet with foil
  • Place meat skin-side-down on the foil
  • Roast for 40ish min­utes until inter­nal tem­per­a­ture exceeds 160F (See NOTES)
  • Take it out, flip it over so skin is up

Option­al: Dry it and then either prick tiny holes in the skin or score it — either way be care­ful NOT to cut past the skin and into the fat. Oth­er­wise it will NOT get bub­bly and crispy

  • Brush on a thin lay­er of vinegar/salt com­bo
  • Broil on High for 3–5 min­utes until desired temperature/doneness (WARNING: This process pro­duces a LOT of smoke. Rec­om­mend open­ing win­dows and cre­at­ing a cross­wind to pre­vent buildup)

Serve

  • Let sit for 15 min­utes
  • Slice into lit­tle squares
  • Serve with rice or noo­dles

Notes

  • Part of the rea­son I’ve been unable to get a prop­er crack­ling exte­ri­or (apart from my mis­takes) is because I real­ized that the skin has been removed on the pieces I buy. It’s just a fat pad

Tem­per­a­ture Guide (SOURCE)

  • 160–165°F – Fat begins ren­der­ing, meat starts becom­ing ten­der
  • 175°F – Fat ren­dered, meat is ten­der
  • 185°F – Fat most­ly ren­dered, meat very ten­der
  • 195–205°F – Fat ful­ly ren­dered, meat fall-apart ten­der

Apple Themed Smoked Ribs

Writ­ten: 1/2/2023

Notes for char­coal smoked St. Louis ribs with an apple theme pulling from a vari­ety of online recipes and ideas

What

Char­coal-smoked St. Louis ribs

Ingredients

1 rack of St. Louis ribs, mus­tard, rice wine, soy sauce, apple juice, 1–2 apples, apple­wood chips, spices

Spices: coarse/Kosher salt, fresh-cracked pep­per­corn, brown sug­ar, gar­lic pow­der, onion pow­der, cumin, papri­ka, dill weed/pickle sea­son­ing

Foil or peach paper

Time

Prep, Overnight, 3–5 hours in smok­er

Steps

  • Com­bine the spices in a bowl: coarse salt, pep­per, brown sug­ar, gar­lic pow­der, onion pow­der, cumin, papri­ka
  • Very impor­tant: remove the con­nec­tive tis­sue lin­ing the bone side of the ribs: Slide a but­ter knife under the film on a bone. Care­ful­ly wig­gle until you can grasp the film and then pull. It should come right off clean­ly.
  • Cut the rack into 2 if you want (you can also sea­son them dif­fer­ent­ly if desired)
  • Add soy sauce, rice wine, and mus­tard, spread­ing even­ly on both sides
  • Rub the com­bined spices into the meat on both sides
  • Very light­ly, sprin­kle a hint of dill/pickle sea­son­ing
  • Use plas­tic wrap to tight­ly bind the rack
  • Refrig­er­ate overnight

Smok­ing day

  • Take the meat out and let it get to room tem­per­a­ture
  • Option­al­ly, soak some apple­wood or pecan chips (there is plen­ty of argu­ment about the func­tion­al­i­ty of this on the inter­net)
  • Pre­pare the smok­er (my set up is quite involved, so it’s a good time killer)
  • Start the char­coal in the chim­ney starter (don’t use lighter flu­id)
  • Fin­ish prep­ping the ther­mome­ters, tongs, and work­space
  • Cut the fresh apples into pieces
  • When the char­coal is ready, pour it into the fire­box and add a few chips and 1 or 2 apple slices. Yes, apple slices! (apple gives off this neato per­fume when it burns)
  • Let the tem­per­a­ture get to be around 250F or so and put the ribs bone side down at the high­est point (I’m using a ver­ti­cal off­set smok­er)
  • Ribs can be smoked any­where between 225F to 300F and they’ll still end up great. Faster cook at high­er temps, slow­er at low­er temps (duh.)
  • Note: When cook­ing with char­coal, big­ger chunks are good for longer even burn­ing, and small­er chunks give high heat faster. Adjust accord­ing to your cook­ing goals
  • About 30 min­utes in and at 60 min­utes throw in your wood chips and apple pieces. Remem­ber that you can add smoke fla­vor, but you can’t take it away, so be wary of over-smok­ing your meat. I per­son­al­ly don’t like a lot of smoke fla­vor, so that’s it for the chips at this step for the rest of the cook.
  • About 1.5 to 2 hours in (depend­ing on amount of meat), remove the ribs. They should have a nice bark on them at this point.
  • Brush on or spritz some apple juice all over the meat
  • Using peach paper (or foil), wrap the ribs
  • Place them back in the smok­er
  • Add more char­coal to main­tain the tem­per­a­ture and any remain­ing chips or apple pieces
  • After 1–2 hours, do the bounce/bend test: if you give the ribs a nice shake and they start to crack, then they’re done. If not, then brush on some more apple juice and let ’em keep cook­ing.
  • Good inter­nal temp for the meat is, appar­ent­ly, 180–200F
  • When they’re done, let the ribs sit for a lit­tle and then serve

What hap­pened to me is that it was get­ting dark, the air tem­per­a­ture was rapid­ly drop­ping, and I did­n’t want to start up anoth­er batch of char­coal, so I took them inside and put them in the con­vec­tion toast­er oven at 275 for an hour. The end prod­uct was real­ly, quite good. I like sub­tle fla­vors, and this was sub­tle on every lev­el: light­ly sweet from the apple juice, per­fect hint of smoke, no over­pow­er­ing spices, a good bark crust despite the apple juice and peach paper. No need for BBQ sauce! The only thing that could have made it bet­ter was cook­ing at the high­er tem­per­a­tures the whole time (except I had oth­er meats in there, too) and putting enough char­coal in there to achieve that.

I love apples!