the GoodEater Collaborative

Author: Kenji Lopez-Alt (41 Articles)

J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is a contributing editor for Cooks Illustrated Magazine, runs a private chef business, KA Cuisine, and writes a weekly column on burgers and food science for SeriousEats.com. He is also an occasional co-host of America's Test Kitchen . Kenji holds a BS from MIT and lives with his wife in Harlem.

This is going to be a quick and dirty installment of GoodEating involving one of my favorite cuisines (Thai), one of my favorite animals (pig), and one of my favorite body parts (belly).

The challenge is this: Can you take one of the fattiest cuts of meat available, deep fry it, and create a dish light enough that you can actually feel good after eating it?

The answer is yes! And here’s how it’s done:

Start with a few thick pieces of pork belly. Ask far enough in advance, and your local butcher should be able to get it for you.

Once you’ve found good pork belly, the hard part’s over. Now take that belly, cover it in water and vinegar at a ratio of 2 parts water to 1 part vinegar. Season the liquid to taste with salt, then bring the whole thing to a simmer.

Allow the belly to simmer for around 45 minutes until it is just beginning to turn tender. Once its done with its hot vinegar bath, let it rest on a rack for at least 20 minutes until it’s cool enough to handle and completely dry, then pick it up and score the skin with a sharp knife or razors into a 1-inch cross-hatch pattern. The idea here is surface area to volume maximization. Scoring will give it more places to crisp up, and crispy = good.

If you’re the kind who likes to do things in steps, you can leave it in the fridge overnight uncovered and finish it off the next night.

Now pull out your perfectly seasoned, supremely versatile cast-iron wok and fill it with a quart or two of vegetable oil. You want enough oil to submerge the pork belly by about an inch. Heat it up until around 325 degrees (hot enough that if you dip a corner of the belly into it, it sizzles gently, not violently).

Put your pork belly in there, give it a quick stir to make sure it’s not stuck on the bottom, then place a loose lid or a piece of foil over the top. These things’ll spit and sputter like a cat in hell.

The trick here is to remember the directions on the back of a bag of microwave popcorn. Listen to the sputtering. Once it’s gone about 30 seconds without producing a big pop, it’s (probably) safe to open up the lid and probe around to check for doneness. This’ll come at around the six to seven minute mark, but as always, your eyes and ears are a better indicator than any timer.

Once the pork looks just like this, I.E. golden brown and super-crisp, it’s done. Transfer the pork back to the rack and salt it immediately. See how many minutes you can go without cracking off a bit of the crunchy edge to sample. Count the minutes, and give yourself points according to the fibonacci sequence. If your total comes to more than zero, you are more stoic than I.

The only thing that should stop you from eating the whole thing is that it’s much better with a bit of sauce.

I’ve never made this sauce the same way twice, but here are some approximate values. Like all Thai food, the balance between the sugar, chiles, fish sauce, and lime juice is all important. Adjust everything to suit your own taste. And remember—Thai food is very forgiving.

Combine equal parts fresh squeezed lime juice, fish sauce, and palm sugar (yes, white sugar, brown sugar, jaggery, etc. will work here), along with half as much soy sauce in a bowl and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Now add a handful of chopped herbs – cilantro, culantro, mint, basil, or chives all work well here – as well as as many finely chopped Thai bird chiles you can stand.

Slice the pork, dip it in the sauce, eat, and swoon.