Filipino · Main
Lechon Kawali
- Intermediate
- 2 h
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with a warm current of chile, richness that coats and comforts, with a clean, bright snap.
Ingredients
- 1kg pork belly, whole slab, skin on
- Bay leaves, peppercorns, 1 head garlic, salt, for the simmer
- Oil for deep frying
- Coarse salt
- Sarsa: Mang Tomas liver sauce, or spiced vinegar with garlic and chili
Equipment
Deep-fry pot
The skills inside
Allergen screen
None found among the 14 screened.
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Simmer the belly in seasoned water 45–60 min until tender; drain. 60 min
- Dry UNCOVERED in the fridge overnight: the skin must be desert-dry.
- Deep-fry at 180°C, standing back (it spits like a personal insult), until the skin blisters and crackles, 12–15 min. 15 min
- Rest 10 min; chop through with a cleaver; salt; serve with sarsa and rice. 10 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Deep frying 96 recipes
- The oil was at temperature before anything went in, measured rather than guessed, and the vessel is no more than two-thirds full.
- Everything went in dry. Surfaces are patted down and any coating is not dripping, because water hitting hot oil erupts and is the one accident this technique actually has.
- The oil recovers between batches. It is back at temperature before the next load goes in rather than falling further with each one.
- A steady vigorous bubbling that slows as it finishes: the bubbles are the food’s own water leaving, so a piece that has gone quiet has stopped drying out and is done.
- Seasoned or finished in the first seconds out of the oil, while the surface is still hot and will hold what lands on it. Anything applied to a cooled crust sits on top and falls off.
Where it goes wrong Too much went in at once and the oil temperature collapsed. The crust forms slowly while the food sits in warm fat absorbing it rather than shedding steam, and it comes out heavy and greasy instead of crisp, which no amount of draining afterwards will fix.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Riesling or Grenache
- Also Right
- Cru Beaujolais
- From the Taps
- Farmhouse saison
- Zero-Proof
- Cloudy apple juice, chilled
Pork loves fruit and gentle sweetness: orchard-note whites and low-tannin reds flatter it where heavy oak flattens.
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