PORK BELLY

 I got ten pounds of pork belly from Prime butcher in Stuyvesant Plaza.  

I tried to remove the rind as was shown on utube, but I was not getting it easily and sometimes I was taking too much.

This rind does not look like other rinds I have seen.  It is more just like thin skin.  So, I took a couple pieces and fried them up with eggs.  Tasted fine.  

I checked out recipes for doing the pork belly in  the oven, but all seem to want a spice maranade and that with a good bit of salt.  One called for coating the rind with salt, saying that would help crisp it.  I can't have that much salt, even if a good bit of it is tossed away after the first cooking.

Tomorrow I'm going to try the slicer on the belly, rind and all.

next day

The butcher says they try to get belly with minimum rind and that explains why this is very different from other rinds I have encountered.  I ran four pounds through the slicer and managed.  But it was not smooth.  It did better cutting with skin side down.  But basically I had to turn it on and off for each peice.  Tasted fine however.  I ended up left with one slice that was rind and skin.  I cut those into little chunks and put them in the deep fried.  They turned out very tasty.

The other half I am doing in the oven.  

Confusing was the recipes that had celcius settings.  Pork belly must be more popular in celcius countries.  

50 minutes on 425 F

25 minutes on 375 F

I used the folding rack and placed it in the glass oven pan.  I did not use parchment as I want to collect the pork fat in the pan.  

Another recipe called for cooking at 350 but for four or five hours.  Seems pretty long.

Well, it cooked up nicely, but doesn't now look like bacon.  I sliced it and got pork slices that will be fine for breakfast eggs.  I saved the fat.  A few all fat slices went in the deep fryer as cracklings.

Hard to know exactly what to do next time.  I guess I'll see as I try to two forms of it.