Last week I made the Crispy Fried Pork Belly recipe from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook.

Except for the rind-on pork belly, the ingredients for this dish are all panty staples. Finding rind-on pork belly turned out to be harder than I expected. Your DeKalb Farmers Market only sells trimmed pork bellies. My second try was Pine Street Market in nearby Avondale Estates. They didn’t have it in stock but could get me some on their next order. Seems like they order on Thursday and the order arrives on Saturday. Since we were going out of town before it would come in, that was a last resort option. I tried Whole Foods 365 and Sprouts since they are both on the way home from Pine Street Market. Whole Foods’ entire meat department was unavailable due to a refrigeration issue and Sprouts did not carry it.

I found it at Buford Highway Farmers Market. They had both bone-in and boneless, skin-on “rib pork belly.” I’ve never seen “bone-in” pork belly before, nor have I seen “rib pork belly.” I don’t know what the difference is, if any, from the unspecified “pork belly” I find elsewhere.

Kenji calls for a two-pound slab. My purchase was a little over two pounds. I gave it a trim to get into a more rectangular shape and that got me down to two pounds.

Kenji has a three-step process for this recipe. First the pork belly is simmered in slightly vinegary salty water for an hour. He includes peppercorns, bay leaves, and garlic in this water, too. He instructs to do this in the wok, and I did, but my wok was not big enough to cover the full height of the pork belly. I thought it would be okay since it simmers covered, but as the meat began contracting, it got taller and pushed the lid up so that it was no longer completely covered.

After the pork belly is simmered, you poke holes into the skin all over. Kenji offers fork, skewer, knife, jaccard, and knife options for this, but cautions to only prick the skin, as going into the meat will cause juices to release that prevent the skin from getting crispy. I attempted the fork. It seemed like the skin had two different textures: a more gelatinous one on the ends that were submerged during the simmer, and a more puncture-resistant middle. There was a point in puncturing where the resistance noticeably gave way. At first, I thought this was the goal puncture depth, but I wonder if that is the puncture depth Kenji cautions against. The meat is then seasoned with salt and baking soda and bakes for 25 minutes or until “very dry.”

The simmered and baked pork rests until cool and then fried skin-side up. You baste the skin with the hot oil allowing it to puff and blister. Once it’s no longer puffing, you turn it over and fry skin-side down until the whole thing is brown and crispy. The skin didn’t puff or blister dramatically for me, which makes me think about that puncture depth from before.

The final result was crispy all around. Kenji says to slice into thick slices, then into bite-sized chunks. I sliced the thick slices into more bite-sized slices, so that each piece had a bit of the skin on it. My son absolutely love it. I thought the skin was a still chewier than I expected, and I think I should’ve foregone the skin-on-each-piece effort and done bite-sized pieces as it was just chewy enough to not bite easily off of the slice. The tastiest part in my opinion were the meatier chunks on the non-skin side. Overall it was fine. We ate it with the Sukang Sawsawan which was very good.

I’d like to try this again. Maybe move it to its side during the simmer after it contracts, try shallower pokes, and cut into bite-sized pieces.

I am cooking my way through J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook. Read more about it.