First sign of the summer, isolation or no isolation, out comes the BBQ and smoker. I had some pork belly in the freezer and had the time to try something new. Cooking the pork belly whole and later slicing it into ribs keeps everything nice and moist. During the winter I had a lovely fennel and sage roasted pork belly and wanted to see if those flavours would hold up in the smoker – they did. Smoking meat was pretty daunting the first few times I tried it but it’s not as hard as you might think. You don’t need a specialist smoker, any ordinary bbq will do. The trick is to find a way to keep a low heat going for 8+ hours. There are two popular methods that I’ve tried, the snake method and the Minion Method. You can google these but essentially they involve lighting a small number of briquettes and placing them next to unlit briquettes. The lite briquettes slowly light the briquettes next to them and this carries on across all of the fuel.
Smoking meat only really involves 3 things, a smoker with some smoking wood, some meat and a rub. The meat, in this case, was a piece of pork belly still on the bone with the skin on (6 ribs). The rub was fennel and sage with a few other dried spices. I marinated the meat overnight but you can do it for a few hours if you don’t have time. I removed the skin from the pork belly and attempted to make some crackling (recipe here – turned out amazing). Pork belly and ribs come from the same part of the pig, the belly sits on top of the ribs. Usually, these are separated and sold individually but speak to your butcher and they’ll sort you out.
To help keep the meat moist I spritzed it every hour and I think it worked really well. You can pick up trigger bottles that are great for this easily these days.
Serves: makes 6 meaty ribs
Cooking time: 6-8 hours
Ingredients
- Pork belly, on the bone, skin on (6 ribs)
For the rub
- 2 tsp salt flakes
- 1 tsp paprika
- 1 tsp cracked black pepper
- 2 tsp fennel seeds
- 2 tsp dried sage
- 1 tsp dried thyme
Spritz
- Apple juice (40ml)
- White wine vinegar (20ml)
- Garlic (2 cloves, minced)
Smoking
- Some smoking wood, I use apple
Method
Remove the skin from the pork belly and place skin side down on a plate with a layer of rock salt, this helps extract moisture from the skin and improves your crackling. Mix all of the rub ingredients and give them a bash in a pestle and mortar. Dry the pork belly with some kitchen towel and massage the rub all over the pork. Wrap in cling film and place on top of the pork skin to add some weight and leave in the fridge overnight. I have a separate post for how to cook the crackling.
In the morning take the pork out of the fridge and set up your smoker. Mix the ingredients for the spritz and pour into the trigger bottle. Place the pork belly bone side down on the grill and add the apple wood to the charcoal. Make sure you have some sort of water bath in your smoker set up to keep the atmosphere nice and moist. Every hour, take a look at the pork and give it a few squirts of the apple juice mixture.
If you’re going to smoke a lot a temperature probe is vital. I smoked the pork for 6 hours at 1400C, cooking closer to 1100C means you’ll be in for a wait of around 8 hours. The temperature of the BBQ will impact the cooking time so it’s difficult to be precise. Just sit back, relax and have a couple of drinks, every minute spent in the smoke is worth it. You’ll only know if the pork is cooked by measuring the internal temperature of the meat. I went fo 900C with the pork belly – still had some bite to it, which I like. If you go for a higher internal temp then the meat will be closer to falling off the bone.
After removing the pork from the smoker wrap it in a double layer of foil and let it rest for 45mins. Once rested slice the belly into the individual ribs and finished them on the BBQ for about 3 mins each side
