Popular Siu Yuk Home-baked for the First Time!
Before trying a recipe for roast pork, I always bought the pork with crispy/crunchy skin at a Cantonese BBQ shop or restaurant. After making it in my own oven, I learned that it wasn’t too difficult.
Below are some links to more details, including photos:
My Story
Whenever I stopped by the fresh pork section in an Asian supermarket, I would see skin-on pork belly. It would be something that I always wanted to buy, but didn’t have a recipe for it.
Inspiring Recipe
One day, I finally searched for a pork belly recipe and found Crispy Golden Pork Belly on Kirbie’s Cravings, a food blog. Since we hadn’t eaten roast pork for awhile, it was the perfect opportunity to try and make this myself!
First Try
After buying some skin-on pork belly, I was ready to go.
Ingredients to Use
With 2.01 pounds of pork belly, I increased some of the ingredients as compared to the original recipe. Below are the amounts that I used:
For the pork belly
- 1 1/3 cup + 1 1/3 teaspoons of salt
For the marinade
- 1/4 cup + 1/8 teaspoon of soy sauce
- 1/3 cup + 1/4 teaspoon + 1/8 teaspoon of Shaoxing rice wine
- 2 tablespoons of brown sugar
- 2 cloves of garlic
Since I didn’t have any table salt, I substituted it with sea salt. By referencing MasterClass’ article, How to Substitute Salt: Simple Salt Conversion Chart, I was able to easily convert what was needed for sea salt.
Steps to Prepare
Of the three parts in the instructions, I followed the first one, but modified the other two as follows:
- Step 2 – After marinating the pork belly overnight for a little over 12 hours in a baking pan, I removed the marinade. Subsequently, I placed a foil-covered slotted pan, with slits on the foil to match the slots, over the baking pan because I didn’t have a roasting pan and wire rack. Also, though the pork belly wasn’t leveled, I just left it as is to see what would happen.
- Step 3 – To get the skin bubbly and crispy, I added 10 minutes to the suggested cooking time, making it a total of 40 minutes.
Time to Eat
Soon after the skin was mostly bubbly, I cut up the belly strips and was ready to pop in my mouth a piece with some crunchy skin!
Recipe Rating
Below were the results of the recipe after the first try:
| Number of Ingredients | Effort (Low🤏, Medium🤏🤏, High🤏🤏🤏) | Cost per Serving (<$2💰, $2-5💰💰, >$5💰💰💰) | Taste (Not for me🤔, Trying Again🙂, Eating Regularly😋) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6️⃣ | 🤏 | 💰💰 | 🙂 |
After biting a piece of pork belly, not only was I rewarded with crunchy skin, but soft meat as well. However, it was a little too salty. Also, what I found unsightly was the hairy skin!
Second Try
For the second try, I aimed for less salty meat and fewer hairs on the skin.
Ingredients to Use
At the supermarket, I tried to look for the strips of pork belly with the least amount of hairs on the skin and ended up with 1.64 pounds. Because I underestimated the weight of the meat at 1.54 pounds when I was converting the ingredients, I ended up using a little less salt, soy sauce, rice wine, and sugar than I should’ve. What I actually used was as follows:
For the pork belly
- 1 cup + 1 1/4 teaspoons of salt
For the marinade
- 3 tablespoons of soy sauce
- 4 tablespoons of Shaoxing rice wine
- 1 1/2 tablespoons + 1/8 teaspoon of brown sugar
- 2 cloves of garlic
Steps to Prepare
For the second try, I took similar steps as the first round with some minor adjustments in Step 3, including wiping away as much extra salt as I could on the pork belly, except in between the strips. As for getting the skin bubbly and crispy, I only added 5 minutes to the suggested cooking time, making it a total of 35 minutes. Lastly, instead of waiting just a few minutes after the meat was done before cutting it into pieces, I waited about 14 minutes, so it wasn’t so hot to handle.
Time to Eat
After cutting up the strips of pork belly, it didn’t seem like we had enough meat on the plate, but I was hoping that it would be okay.
Recipe Rating
Below are the results of the recipe from the second attempt:
| Number of Ingredients | Effort (Low🤏, Medium🤏🤏, High🤏🤏🤏) | Cost per Serving (<$2💰, $2-5💰💰, >$5💰💰💰) | Taste (Not for me🤔, Trying Again🙂, Eating Regularly😋) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6️⃣ | 🤏 | 💰💰 | 🙂 |
With the following comment about the plate of pork belly, I knew it at least looked like Cantonese roast pork:
Is this siu yuk?
– Older Son
Though the skin was crunchy, it could’ve been more so. The meat had the right amount of saltiness and was still soft, but it had some gamey taste. Nonetheless, I was happy that there were no noticeable hairs on the skin and no leftovers!
Overall, this was a good recipe to reference for roast pork, but to improve on it, I can try the following next time:
Continuous Improvement
- Go back to baking the pork belly for a total of 40 minutes at the end for the crunchy skin.
- Wait 15 minutes before cutting the meat, so it’s cooler on the hand.
- Find a way to mask the gamey taste of the belly, if needed.
With a little creativity, I was able to make the pork belly even without the wire rack listed in the recipe. With that experience, I learned the following:
Lesson for Dumber Self
- Not only can substitutes be made for ingredients, they can for equipment or tools as well.
What will you do now?
Next Step for You
- Try the Crispy Golden Pork Belly recipe from the food blog, Kirbie’s Cravings?
- Learn some ways to minimize the gamey taste in pork, e.g., reading How To Get Rid Of Gamey Taste In Pork: Cause and Prevention from the blog, BBQ Host?
- Read another post on this site? (Go to the menu at the top of the page.)