Roast Pork (Siew Yuk)

Tried experimenting with siew yuk yesterday with a recipe I found on the net. I'm a bit lazy to jot down the recipe, except to say that the ingredients are so simple. All you need is good pork belly, five-spice powder, quite a bit of salt and vinegar.

The recipe first called for scalding the skin with a boiling vinegar and water mixture. I don't know why this needs to be done, but it did firm up the skin and seemed to help remove the moisture together with the salt.

Marinade the meat with the five-spice powder and salt for at least 2 hours. Score or pierce the skin and rub a generous amount of salt on it to remove moisture. This will help make the skin into crackling. Pop it into a 180°C oven about 1/2 hour and you'll see the salt crystallize. Remove them and roast for a further 1/2 hr or until the skin bubbles up and turn crispy. Rest and serve.

Fresh from the oven, resting...



After some deft knifework and a bit of garnish...

Nice and juicy...

Crispy pork!

The best part was cutting the meat. A good measure of siew yuk is how crispy the skin gets, and it was such a nice 'shyok, shyok' sound that reached my ears while I was chopping it into bite-sized pieces. Ahh..heavenly!

p/s: If anyone can explain about the vinegar, please let me know!