In 2013 dinner thread, @dcarch posted about sous vide pork belly with crispy skin (great photos). Since I can no longer post in that thread, I'm posting here. This is what dcarch said:
After many years of trying, finally perfect cracklin' skin on perfectly juicy tender meat! Here are the steps:
1. Poke a million holes on the skin. Season and rub well all meat surfaces.
2. Use a flat tray and make the skin lay very flat, and freeze pork belly.
3. While it is still frozen, boil the skin side in shallow boiling water to cook the skin only.
4. After the skin has been well cooked, and the meat is still frozen because of the fat layer, sous vide the pork belly the normal way. I did 24 hours.
5. Take the pork belly out from sous vide bag and dry with paper towel.
6. Wrap Heavy duty alum foil all around, exposing only the skin.
7. Lay foiled pork belly (food safety) on a rack in a dehydrator set at 150F (food safety!) face down so the skin will be flat and fat can be drained away. Dehydrate overnight.
8. In a pre-heated 400F oven, bake the pork belly face up with the alum foil on a cold pizza stone.
9. Don't walk away. In a few minutes, the skin will puff up beautifully.
10. Let the pork belly get to room temperature and the skin will be unbelievable on the most amazing juicy tender sous vided (24 hours +12 hours) pink meat.
11. Find a way to divide the skin up equally or you will end up with big fights. 🙂
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re: #3, how long does one boil the skin side?
re: #7, I have no dehydrator. What do you recommend?
