Crispy Chinese Roast Pork is a must for every religious occassion in Malaysia and most of South East Asia. Big slabs of slow roasted pork belly adorn the altar tables in homes and businesses on religious holidays. After the offerings to the gods, the roast pork is then served at a family banquet.

This is a great simple recipe for really crispy Chinese Roast Pork. It is inspired by the roast crispy pork that you see hanging in the windows in Chinese Restaurants. Don’t get confused with the other common roast pork, Char Siu. That is usually strips of pork loin, marinated in a sweet sauce and roasted. It is quite common to see both these types of roast pork sold together. In Chinatown, one of the most popular dishes to order is a Roast Pork and Char Siu rice.

This is quite a simple recipe that uses some typical Chinese flavours like five spice powder but you can leave these out to suit your own taste. This will make a great Sunday lunch recipe but you do have to start a few days earlier. It takes a bit of time and effort but the resulting crispy crackling and melting soft pork is worth all the effort.

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Really Crispy Roast Pork

Ingredients

A slab of belly pork about 1kg to 1.5kg - size to suit number of servings.
Salt
5 spice powder to taste
white vinegar for the skin

Instructions

Preheat oven to 200C/400F/gas 6.
Wash and scrape the skin until clean. Pour over a kettle of boiling water on the skin side of the belly pork and dry it.
Sometimes, I leave it in the fridge overnight uncovered to get even crispier results.
Rub about 1 -2 tsp of salt all over.
Sprinkle and rub in 5 tsp of 5 spice powder all over the pork until it looks brown.
To roast, put the slab of bellypork, skin side up, on a wire rack over a pan of water. This will collect the fat that will be rendered out of the pork while roasting and stop the oil from splattering.
Roast in a hot oven for 1 1/2 hours at 200C.
After 1 hour, brush the skin side with vinegar and put the grill on in the oven as well and watch the skin blister. Leave it in the oven for another half an hour.
You should get a really crispy piece of Roast Pork with minimal effort.

Serve the roast pork with rice and stir fried vegetables. Meals are not complete without a spicey condiment. We usually serve this roast pork with a garlic chilli sauce . This would be the same garlic chilli that goes with Hainanese Chicken Rice.

What to do with leftover roast pork

If you have any of the roast pork left, you could always cut into little cubes and add it to fried rice. Alternatively, this is a dish that is one of my mum’s Hokkien recipes, Roast Pork in Sweet Soya Sauce.