2020 Super Bowl Food/Drink Thread

[gyroprotagonist 2592]

So I saw a recipe online for a smoked pork belly burnt ends and thought damn that sounded good.

Took 3lbs of pork belly and then cut it up into about 1x1" squares.  recipe was for an Asian style dish so rolled it in a mix of spices  like 5 spice, all spice, red pepper flake, paprika and the standard salt, pepper etc...

Then into the egg at 235F for about 2 hours

 

The idea was to just get the meat to 170ish and render the fat.  Then take the cubes and place into a pan to braise for about an hour in a soy, apple juice and rice wine vinegar based sauce.

 

 

 

I just braised them in the oven (had other stuff occupying the egg) and holy crap, at this point they were fantastic.  The fat cap on top has a great barky skin but was super soft inside and just melted over the meat as you bit into it.

At this point, you could call them done, because they were that good, but I was going to follow the recipe the end.  Next step was to take liquid from the braising pan and add in some apple cider vinegar and something sweet to balance.  I used agave syrup.  Then boil down to a glaze consistency and dump over the cubes.  then throw them on a grill to crisp up a bit.  maybe a minute on either side before the sugar starts to char.

Anyway, these were totally worth the effort.  If I do them again, need to take care to get a better piece of pork belly that had a more even thickness.  there were some areas that did not have a good fat cover and these dried out during smoking and did not get that punch of umami from the rendered fat.

Here's the recipe: linky

No one else in the family wanted to try them, so I ate about 3/4s of the entire batch and wallowed in my gluttony during the SB

[Jerry Callo 8703]

I did pork belly burnt ends for the game.  They have been a hit everywhere I've taken them.  Here's the recipe from HowToBBQRight.