Crispy Roasted Pork Belly- "THỊT HEO QUAY" Air Fryer Recipe #2

There's actually dozens if not hundreds of recipes on how to make this popular dish but today we are using my dad’s techniques, the vinegar and refrigerator drying out method. I didn't want to spend hours in front of the oven so we’ll be using my air fryer method & recipe since because it’s quick (about 45 min) and it turned out super crispy!

Eat with authentically with rice, vermicelli noodles with scallion oil, or in a banh mi sandwich. You can also totally mix things up and put it on top of Shanghai Spring Onion Noodles, or soy sauce noodles.

Recipe for Shanghai Spring Onion Noodles below:

For traditional baking instructions (not in the air fryer), click below link!

CRISPY SKIN TIPS

Seasoning & Marinating: When marinating your pork belly make sure your marinade does not touch the skin. The skin needs to be absolutely dry to achieve a crispy skin.

Prepping skin: The key step to crispy skin is making small punctures/holes into the pork belly skin that breaks through pork skin's surface but not too deep into the fat layer (if you do fat will come up through the pores). I tried 2 different methods: I used paring knife to puncture and score, and a small sewing needle to puncture skin. The best was just using a needle and puncturing like hundreds of holes into the skin, each hole essentially would blister up during the roasting process.

Slicing: As much as you are craving to cut into the pork belly after it comes out of your oven, resist the temptation and wait til it gets to room temperature or else you'll let all the juices out and you'll also get a soggy pork belly skin!

Vinegar: Vinegar makes the skin super dry and crispy! Nom Nom Nom!!! (In the Vietnam they also lime juice)

Annato oil or Annato powder: use a little of this on the skin along with some Five Spice powder and you'll get that perfect orange/warm tinted skin. Otherwise, it'll be more fleshy/gray which doesn't have that warm golden brown color.

PORK BELLY MEAT MARINADE

• 3 lbs pork belly (ask butcher for one with a decent amount of meat and nice layer of pork belly skin, I try to find pieces that have at least 1 1/2” of meat)

• 1 tbs Rum Liqour or vodka

• 1 tbs hoison sauce

• 2 tbs of maggi or soy sauce

• 1/2 tsp Chinese bbq powder (red color)

• 1 tsp honey

• 1/2 tbs black pepper

• 1.5 tsp salt

• 3/4 tsp 5-spice chinese powder
  

  
  SKIN VINEGAR DRYING SOLUTION

• Vinegar

• Salt

  Sesame Oil / Salt Crust

• 1/16 tsp annato powder

• 1/2 tsp Chinese powder

• Sesame oil

• Coarse Sea salt
  
  
  PREPARATION
  1. Clean pork belly step 1: Mix 2 tbs vinegar, 1.5 tsp salt and 4 cups and cover pork in baking pan for 10 min. Place pork skin facing up in the vinegar solution, if the vinegar solution does not cover the skin, you’ll need to do 10 min in the vinegar solution with meat side submerged, then another 10 min with skin side submerged.

  2. Clean pork belly step 2: Wash and clean pork under water and scrape the skin with sharp knife along the pork belly skin to remove any dirt and dead outer layer/skin from pork belly (Skin should be a clean white throughout entire skin, no dirty patches, this sounds gross but if your pork belly is hairy you’ll need to use a razor to shave off the hairs).

  3. Pat dry and let dry for 10 min

  4. Use a tweezer to remove any remaining hairs on the pork belly skin.

  5. Cut long slices about 2” apart to the bottom of pork belly vertically along the longest part of your slab of meat (meat part only up to the fat, do NOT cut into fat/skin).

  6. If you are using a air fryer you'll need to cut your pork belly into sections that will fit in your deep fryer, my pieces were about 4” x 6 1/2” sections.

  7. Marinate bottom of pork belly (Do not marinate the skin!) and onto the sides of the meat and be careful not to touch the marinade onto the pork belly skin, if you do, just wipe it off with a paper towel. Be sure to get the marinade up into all the cut slits you made as well.

  8. Transfer pork belly (skin side up) onto a foil lined pyrex pan that is almost the same size as the pork belly.

  9. Score the pork belly skin a few times in a hatch mark pattern, just barely slicing into the skin. Then prick pork belly skin with a needle (sharp paring knife or meat pricking tenderizer) and make sure you break into the skin but not too deep into the fat layer.

  10. Brush skin top with vinegar, and lightly salt with skin and rub the salt evenly across the top of the skin (about 1/2 to full tsp of salt). Let dry for 1 to two days uncovered in the fridge (two days total drying time preferred).
  
  
  ROASTING DAY:
  
  1. Let pork belly slab get room temperature (about 1 hour).

  2. Sprinkle 1/16 tsp five spice powder, 1/16 tsp annato powder ontop of pork belly skin and add sesame oil and brush along sufrace until evenly coated (or mix spices with sesame oil and brush on skin).

AIR FRYER DIRECTIONS

3. Place foil wrapped pork belly and place into air fryer for 30min- at 325 degrees on air fry mode.

4. At the end of 30 min, remove pork belly and scrape off salt layer with knife and discard salt. Wipe skin off with a paper towel.

5. If there is a lot of oil in your tin foil pan you made, dump the oil out in a jar to save pork fat or toss out. Then air fry again at 400F for additional 10-15 min. Check periodically after 10 min and cover any spots that appears to be burning (if any) with foil so they don’t continue to burn.

6. Roast until meat is 145F or 63C (Doing 10 min at 300 then 10 min at 375 my internal meat temperature was right at 145-450 degrees) and skin is crispy.

• At the end of your 145F heat cooking if you don't get super crackly skin, remove the fat renderings from the foil pan, and heat on cast iron skillet until smoking, ladle some of that hot fat pork renderings with a metal spoon over the skin for it to bubble up some.

FINISHING
1. Remove from oven/air fryer and place on wire rack and let cool for 15 minutes.
2. Cut along bottom cut lines that you made with skin side down.
3. Then cut each slice into many 1/2” slices by slowing cutting down on the meat and through the skin, and then press firmly down to snap/cut through the skin.

SERVING
1. Serve with fish dipping sauce, Nuoc Mam or Nuoc Mam Gung
2. Plate with fine rice noodles fresh lettuce and herbs

After 10 min in air fryer at 300 degrees this is what it looked like.

After another 10 min in air fryer at 375 degrees it looked perfect like this!

Make sure your pork belly meat is at least 145, this was after like 8 min so I put it back in for a couple more minutes till it reached 145.