ThermoBlog 2/19/2022
We haven’t yet gone so far down the pork belly rabbit hole that we need to change the name of this site to “the PorkBellyBlog,” but that’s only by a sheer act of will. It would be easy to put out blog post after blog post, each one detailing the nuances of a new pork belly recipe, re-iterating the essential thermal principles at play while dancing freely with flavors and textures. I mean, you’ve already seen us cook classic BBQ pork belly burnt ends, Asian-sticky pork belly burnt ends, Filipino adobo pork belly burnt ends, and Roman-accented porchetta—plus homemade bacon and even a crispy oven-roasted pork belly. But guess what? There’s no end in sight for one of our favorite cuts!
Today we bring you another amazing pork belly dish, one that goes the extra heart-clogging mile by actually battering and deep-frying those smoky-tender cubes. Yes, we’ll be smoking pork belly, cubing it, dipping it in a truly remarkable corn batter (made with extra corn), and frying them to a beautiful golden brown. Then we’ll dip them in barbecue sauce. Yum.
Here, we’ll talk about the right temps you need for pork-belly tenderness as well as for frying, and we’ll be adapting our recipe from the culinary tempters at All Things BBQ. Smoked pork belly fritters, here we come!
Cooking pork belly on the smokerAs delicious as pork belly is, it is not as straightforward to cook as, say, a steak. However, the thermal principles at play are par for the course with BBQ. We need long, low, slow cooking to break down the collagen in the pork belly and to render down some of the fat. For this recipe, we cooked our pork belly at a very low 225°F (107°C), giving it plenty of time to absorb smoke and develop bark. If you want to speed up the cook a bit, you can push that smoking temp up to 250°F (121°C). You’ll save a little time and still get great flavor.
More:
https://blog.thermoworks.com/pork/smoked-pork-belly-fritters/
