Pork belly, get in my belly!

Wondering what to do with pork bellies? We were! 

We are at the mercy of the butcher's when it comes to the flavor of bacon and the one we are required to use by the USDA  for our "pork by the pound" doesn't have quite the right flavor we are looking for with our pork. We prefer a more traditional, slow smoke artisan bacon. They also don't do salt pork, another of our favorites. So we have been getting the bellies back "fresh". Fresh referring more to them being uncured and unsalted, basically freshly taken right from the side and underbelly of the hog. But what do you do with it?

Here's what you do with it! BURNT ENDS!!!!

You'll need:

2-3 pounds pork belly

Cayenne

Chili powder

Garlic powder

Onion powder

Cumin

Salt

Brown sugar

Jam (we suggest our rhubarb)

Barbeque sauce

A foil pan

Grill

First things first we cut the bellies into little 1 inch or so squares. We mixed 2 teaspoons salt with 1 heaping teaspoon each of cayenne, chilli powder, garlic powder, onion powder, cumin and added it to 1 tablespoon of brown sugar and coated the belly pieces well.

We let that sit for a bit-about half an hour, but could definitely see letting it go several hours or even overnight. 

We dumped it out into a little square aluminum pan. Pretty sure a bigger pan would be better, but hey, it's all we had! We set it out on the grill. Now, we don't have some fancy treager. Nope! Just the good old gas grill from Sears we have had for ages. 

We let it cook at medium for about half an hour. Y'all! You don't even know how good that smells! It was like all summers goodness floating on the air! 

After it looked "done" by being crispy and bubbly and temping at 140 we pulled it off the grill. Can't really say how long they were on. We had folks at the farm stand, friends had dropped by and time kinda disappeared. Guess we'd just have to say keep an eye on it and when it looks all ooey gooey, blackened bubbly, and "done" pull them off! (Had we had more time, the smoker and a longer cook time would have been much much better, just saying!)

We made a sauce and added it to the cooked ends. We used about  1 cup barbeque sauce mixed with about a quarter a cup of brown sugar. Don't judge man, we like that sweet sugary sauce! We also put in a half a cup or so of that gorgeous ruby red rhubarb jam we made a few weeks ago. Sorry, we forgot to measure..if you know us well we are often just "winging it" here. 

After all those crispy morsels were coated we put them back on the grill for just a few minutes. This time we used two pans so that there was plenty of space for the heat to hit. We bumped the heat a bit to get that incredible, sweet char that we here all love so much!

And then we "pigged" out on those pork bellies! Goodness sakes they were fabulous!

Seriously, these will make you famous at your next barbeque. Be warned though, you might not want to eat much of anything else!!! 

If you want to give it a whirl head over to Makerslongacres.com or visit us at the farm. Pork belly is on sale right now for only $6 a pack!!!