Roast pork belly with foolproof perfect crackling

Before you start

If you don’t have 24 hours to air dry the pork, use the hot air of a hair dryer to dry the skin before roasting.

Tips for the best crackling

1. Choose the right cut. When it comes to a big slab of roast pork with great crackling, pork belly is king. Don’t bother with pork loin or shoulder – they’re better suited to other dishes. Neither of those cuts will give you the meat and crackling you want like pork belly does. Why? To keep roast pork moist and tender it needs plenty of fat – and pork belly has lots. The layers of fat in pork belly baste the meat as it cooks, keeping the whole cut juicy. Pork belly also has the right amount of fat between the meat and the skin (also known as rind) to give you a buttery cooked layer of fat rather than a wobbly gelatinous mass. And, crucially, pork belly is a more even, flat cut, resulting in the most even finish.
2. Score it carefully. Lines of scoring allow the heat to penetrate the fat below the rind quicker and help crisp it up better. If you cut all the way through the fat into the meat, however, you run the risk of the juices from the meat bubbling up into the fat too. If this moisture leaks into the fat it will lower the temperature and prevent it from crisping up. For the perfect score, use a Stanley knife or small sharp knife to score through the rind and around two thirds of the fat below it. Score lines about 1.5cm apart for an even finish. You can ask a butcher to do this for you as, without a very sharp knife, it can be a tricky task.
3. Dry brine it for 24 hours. Well before turning the oven on, you need to get the skin good and dry. Moisture is the enemy of good crackling, and there’s enough fat in pork belly to keep the meat succulent without extra moisture, so you want to remove as much as possible. Pat the pork dry all over with kitchen paper, then massage lots of fine sea salt into the scored rind, working it into the slashes. It then needs to sit in the fridge overnight, uncovered, to help it dry out even further. But we’re not done yet! Three hours before you’d like to start cooking the pork, remove it from the fridge and put in a cool part of your kitchen. Brush off the salt and pat the skin dry again, as the salt will have drawn out moisture from the fat, then rub in some more salt. This final few hours air-drying will ensure you get the crispiest crackling.
4. Start on a high heat. Cooking the pork belly at an intense heat at the start will mean the fat instantly bubbles up through the skin to baste the top until it crisps up. Starting off at a lower temperature creates moisture in your oven, and this can soften the skin and undo all your efforts to dry the rind.
5.  To give your crackling a head start… Pour some hot neutral flavoured veg oil over the rind just before it goes into the oven so it’ll start crisping up as soon as you close the oven door. You only need to coat it with a little oil – you don’t want it pooling around the meat – but it makes a big difference to the end result.