Crispy Pork Belly Recipe | Perfect Light Crackling

Last updated on October 16th, 2026

This crispy pork belly recipe starts off in a strange way. The first step is simmering the belly skin side down in a little water for 2 minutes, then dunking it into cold water to cool off. It’s a trick I also use for porchetta with light crackling, because it’s what starts breaking down the skin.

So cooking pork belly has always been something that has bugged me. Even after 20 years of professional cooking I’ve never been 100% happy with the crackling. Sometimes it comes out great but other times I fear I’m going to break a tooth, even though I cook it in the exact same way.

It’s a really inconsistent piece of meat to cook. But look at this chicharron I bought earlier, this is essentially crackling, it’s just been cooked separately from the meat.

It’s so light and crisp, there’s no risk of breaking a tooth here at all!

So I wanted to know if it’s possible to get something this light and crispy on top of a pork belly, just by roasting it in the oven. I don’t want to deep fry it, pour super hot oil over the skin or shallow fry it in a pan to achieve this.

Pork skin and hot fat, do not go well together! Oh yeah and it needs to have tender meat and cook in around an hour.

Not much to ask right?

Ingredients You’ll Need

You only need three ingredients: a 500 g piece of skin-on pork belly, 6 g of salt and a splash of vodka (10-20 ml). You’ll also need toothpicks, a saucepan, some foil, a wire rack that sits over a roasting tray and a probe thermometer.

How to Make Crispy Pork Belly in the Oven

Simmer the belly skin side down for 2 minutes, cool it in cold water, pierce the skin with toothpicks, salt it and rub on a splash of vodka. Dry brine it for 12 hours, then roast at 170°C (340°F) until it reaches 80-85°C inside and finish at 250°C (480°F) for 10 to 15 minutes until the crackling puffs.

So, I’ve combined all of the techniques that are proven to work into 1 effective method. I’ve taken inspiration from acupuncture, physics and a 15-year-old blog post that’s buried deep in the internet.

The best thing about this method is that there’s not much hands-on work, it takes less than an hour to cook and there’s no crazy high level of cooking skill needed. In fact, you don’t even need to use a knife.

Grab some toothpicks and pinch a few of them between your fingers, then just start to jab the skin of the pork. Pierce as close together as you can. It’s best to work in a pattern rather than random jabbing because it’s not easy to see where you’ve been.

You don’t need to go deep, aim for around this far.

This seems like a bit of a faff but it doesn’t take long and it’s easier than scoring the skin with a knife.

Piercing vs Scoring: Why I Skip the Knife

Scoring is the traditional way to prepare the skin, but it asks a lot of your knife. This brings me onto pork belly number 2. I’m going to prepare it using the most common methods of scoring, salting and roasting, so you can see the night and day difference this traditional method makes compared to the new way I’m sharing with you today.

Usually the skin is prepared by scoring it with a sharp knife, there are a few different ways, straight lines, criss cross, or a grid like this.

Now there’s some issues here, the main one is you need a super sharp knife to be able to do this properly. If your knife isn’t sharp enough then you’ll have to apply more pressure to break through the skin. This makes it really easy to slice too deep into the meat.

This dries it out, creating tough, chewy patches of meat, not the tender, melt-in-your-mouth experience you’re looking for.

I opted for the criss cross pattern and I made a couple of slashes a bit too deep, so we can see what happens with this one.

Dry Brine Pork Belly With Salt and Vodka

From here I’m going to salt both the bellies all over, I used around 6 grams of salt for each. Dry brining is something I do to all my big cuts, and I go into more detail in my steak secrets for cheap cuts.

Evenly season the salt all over the meat and the skin, and rub the salt into the skin a little, like a light exfoliation.

Now the weirdest but possibly the most valuable part of this recipe is what I found buried deep on the internet. Someone known as “Origamicrane” did an extensive test on 10 different pieces of pork belly.

They found that rubbing a splash of vodka on the skin of the pork, gave incredible results. So of course we have to find out if this works.

Apparently you don’t need much, just a splash, rubbed all over the surface of the skin. That’s all the preparation done, it really couldn’t be much easier.

Now I like to leave it to brine for 12 hours in the fridge, but you could roast this straight away.

I like to dry brine all my meat covered in a large container, you just want a lot of air around the pork, there are many ways you could achieve this. I use the same covered approach when salting the bird for my juicy roast chicken.

Lots of recipes recommend doing this uncovered in the fridge, but I don’t like having my apples, tomatoes and whatever else is in there coated in essence of raw pork.

Some things have changed overnight, there’s condensation on the container, some water on the tray and both of the skins look a little drier. These are all good signs.

Levelling Out the Thin End So It Crackles Evenly

One of the most overlooked and simple steps when cooking pork belly is doing something about this dip. It’s where the meat thins out, and this part of the skin is always the last to crackle.

So the best method is to level it out, you can use a piece of onion, a slice of potato, a stick of celery, and if you haven’t got any of those then a ball of foil will work just as well.

Now with a sheet of foil just fold up the sides so they sit below the skin. Crimp the corners and you want to be left with something like this, where the skin and the top layer of fat are the only things not covered.

This foil container is doing 2 things for us. The first is that it’s going to protect the meat from the high temperatures of the oven, and the 2nd we’ll talk about a bit later.

How Long to Cook Crispy Pork Belly in the Oven

For a 500 g belly, expect around 45 minutes at 170°C (340°F) until the inside reads 80-85°C, then 10 to 15 minutes at 250°C (480°F) to puff the crackling. That’s about an hour of oven time, plus a rest of at least 20 minutes.

Next place it on a wire rack that’s over a roasting tray. A rack does the same job when I’m cooking chicken tikka on a rack. The other belly it’s just going on the rack unlevelled and uncovered as it is.

This is about as high as I like to go with the temperature of my oven in this 1st stage of cooking. Any higher and a belly of this size and shape will cook too quick and risk becoming tough.

This temperature can be so much lower though, the lower, the more tender the end result will be but the longer the cooking time.

I want to show you the quick end of the scale today because it only takes around an hour in total, including the 2nd step that we’re about to get into.

This brings this affordable, tasty cut of meat into the realm of weeknight meal options. Get a tray of crispy roast potatoes in alongside it and you’ve got a proper roast dinner midweek.

You want it to be anywhere between 80 and 85°C at this stage, this took 42 minutes for me. There’s no crackling so far but there is this bubbling starting to happen and this belly has rendered a lot more fat than the traditional method.

Speaking of which, this one is showing some signs of crackling around the edges, the 2 deep slices from scoring have opened up and the skin is starting to look like the hard, teeth-breaking crackling we all know too well.

How to Get Crispy Pork Belly Skin to Puff

Once your oven’s up to 250°C load the pork back in and watch that crackling pop. Rotate the tray a couple of times during the process and after 10 to 15 minutes you will have incredible crackling.

Now for the hardest part of the whole recipe… Leaving it to rest for at least 20 minutes. Use that time to deglaze the roasting tray and make a simple pan sauce from everything left behind.

This method has worked so well on so many levels, a lot of the fat has rendered out leaving us with this light, crisp crackling, and there’s no worries about breaking a tooth! Serve it with a pan of sweet braised red cabbage to cut through the richness.

Contrast this with the other belly, there’s still this thick layer of unrendered fat and the crackling just hasn’t puffed. It would’ve got there with another 5 or 10 minutes of hard roasting but by that point the meat would be dry and disappointing. Serve it with a dish of thinly layered boulangère potatoes.

Frequently Asked Questions

Crispy Pork Belly Recipe | Perfect Light Crackling

Ben Goshawk

A crispy pork belly recipe with light, crisp crackling you won’t break a tooth on, and no deep frying. Pierce the skin, salt it, rub on a splash of vodka and dry brine, then roast gently and finish hot for tender meat in about an hour of oven time. A cheap cut that works as a weeknight meal.

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 10 minutes mins

Cook Time 1 hour hr

Total Time 1 hour hr

Course Main

Cuisine British

Servings 4

Calories 648 kcal

Equipment

• Baking / Roasting tray
• Wire / Cooling rack
• Mixing bowl / Bowl
• Chopping board
• Knife (general)
• Digital scales
• Thermometer / Probe
• Saucepan
• Toothpicks

Ingredients

  

1x2x3x

• 500 g skin-on pork belly
• 6 g salt
• 10-20 ml vodka

Instructions

 

• Simmer the pork belly skin side down in water for 2 minutes, then dunk it into cold water to cool.
• Once the belly is cool remove from the water and pat the belly dry.
• Using toothpicks, a fork, or a jacquard pierce the skin of the pork all over (see pics for depth)
• Evenly cover the belly in salt and rub the salt into the skin side a little, I used around 6g for a 500g belly.
• Now rub 10-20ml of vodka onto the skin.
• Leave the belly to dry brine for 12 hours.
• Once brined roast at 170c 340f for around 45 minutes, until the internal temp reads 80-85c (176-185F).
• Remove the belly from the oven and raise the temperature to 250c, 480f.
• Once the oven is hot place the belly back in for 10 to 15 minutes, rotating the tray a couple of times, until the crackling has puffed. Rest for at least 20 minutes.

Video

Nutrition

Serving: 1servingCalories: 648kcalProtein: 11.7gFat: 66.3gSaturated Fat: 24.2gCholesterol: 90mgSodium: 621mgPotassium: 231mg

Keyword crispy pork belly, crispy pork belly recipe, dry brine pork belly, pork belly crackling

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