Pork belly is ideal for roasting or slow cooking. Most people love a good hog roast and indirect cooking a pork belly joint or shoulder or pork on the BBQ is just as good.
You can cook the pork as it is or to create a wonderful aroma from the BBQ and great flavour, create a rub for the pork. A memphis style rub with a cup full of smoked paprika and a spoonful of garlic salt, celery salt, paprika, mustard powder and salt.
If you’re going to use a rub, do this the day before if you can; we recommend between 6 – 24 hours. Once you have applied the rub, leave the pork belly skin side up, wrapped in a cling film or a plastig bag in the fridge. Take the meat out of the fridge 1 hour before you want to put on the BBQ.
Firstly, lets start with the BBQ, we recommend a charcoal BBQ with a lid and a thermometer. I tried this on a gas BBQ and couldn’t get the heat I needed in the larva rock needed to fill the whole BBQ with the heat needed. And over 5-8 hours of cooking you use a lot of gas! So charcoal it is. Heat the coals in a chimney until white hot and place them around the outside of the BBQ leaving a clear space in the middle of the BBQ.
Once your BBQ is at between 150 – 180 degrees c, place the pork on the BBQ over the space without any coals. If you place the meat directly over the coals, you will burn the meat.
Depending on the size of your pork belly, cook at between 150 – 180 degrees c for 4-7 hours or until the internal temperature of the pork belly is 170 oC. Once you’ve cooked it several times, when you stick the thermometer into the meat, you will know if it’s cooked as the meat feels like it is starting to pull/fall apart.
Once cooked, remove the meat from the BBQ and place in a pre-heated dish and serve with a delicious homemade BBQ sauce.
As well as pork belly, you can also use this recipe for a pork shoulder.