I was planning to sous vide another batch of pork belly when G pointed me to a (then recent) post on making sio bak (aka siew yuk) from I Eat I Shoot I Post. Hmm… same meat and cut, can brine with the same spices, and both are superb in part because of the texture contrast. Hence the birth of the sous vide roast pork (烧肉) frankenrecipe. The end result is a roast that is incredibly moist and buttery soft ala sous vide combined with the crisp crunchy crust of a traditional siew yuk.
Wholly unnecessary? Probably. Oh-so tasty? Definitely!
To familiarize myself with how to make traditional siew yuk, I did a quick search to learn how others approached this dish. It turns out there are more home recipe variations than there are dialect names (and spellings) for this roasted delicacy. In the end, I stuck with I Eat’s directions because of its elegant simplicity (though the photos for this other recipe are damn inspiring).
I won’t repost detailed instructions as you can visit Leslie’s site. But, I will list the basic steps since it will be a helpful reference for later:
- Select a nice even slab of pork belly (1.5 kg)
- Dry rub the meat with the spice marinade
- Dry the skin thoroughly
- Gently pierce the skin with the “skin pricker”
- Bake at 200 °C for approx 50 min
- Apply vinegar. Broil till burnt
- Scrape the blackened parts away
- Enjoy!
Recipes do not get much simpler than this. Even the marinade only includes a few key spices. This is definitely a good starting point to hone your roasting and crisping skills. While my first try resulted in a decent siew yuk, I found that the meat was just not meltingly tender.
So like our dear Victor, I combined various recipes and theories to build myself a purportedly better monster of a roast pork. First, I sous vide the pork belly based on my previous recipe, substituting the brine spices with those used for siew yuk. 48 hours later, I removed the pork belly and proceeded to thoroughly dry the skin. This is really the most important part of making a good roast pork. The most common tip is to add a light coat of vinegar. I’m still looking for a good explanation as to why this works, but I’ve found that in practice, you can get just as nice a skin without it, so long as the skin is properly dried and pricked.
Since the meat was already cooked, I didn’t want to waste too much time leaving it in the fridge or outside to air dry. Instead, I very liberally salted the top of my pork belly (draws out moisture), waited for about a half hour, scraped off the salt, and repeated. When pricking the skin, it’s important to remember that poke too deep you’ll end up puncturing into the layer of fat below that will later cause little pools of fat to form on the skin, not desirable. Instead, aim to prick halfway through the skin, it will take a bit of practice, but you will end up with a much prettier and evenly bubbled skin.
Set the oven to broil and start with your pork belly further away from the heat. Move the roast closer as you see that the skin is ready to crisp/burn. At this point, you can char the skin and scrape off the black bits later, or just aim for a nice golden brown (like what I did). Let it rest on a drying rack (preferably sideways). Cut as recommended, and enjoy!
Fun fact, blackening the skin used to be a vital step because pork bellies often still had coarse hairs on them since it was too costly and time-consuming to pluck out every single one. Burning the hairs off was the fastest way to solve this problem. It’s also great to have a family friend whose ex happened to roast these meats for a living 
