The Magic of Air-frying Chinese Roast Pork!
The hubby and I love Chinese roast pork. You know the one with the extremely crunchy skin and the savory meat beneath it? At Chinese restaurants and barbecue places, these are so good but also can get extremely greasy. So how can we eat what we love while still maintaining our healthy-ish lifestyle?
One of our favorite appliances in the kitchen is the air-fryer. It wasn’t even all that expensive from Target, but we swear by that little machine. We no longer needed any other convection oven. Heck - I don’t even need a toaster! Leftovers that we bring home and store can be air-fried back to the same crispiness as if we just bought it (sometimes even better if it’s something like leftover pizza). So the more we thought about it, why not try to air-fry this roast pork that is traditionally broiled in the oven?
One of the benefits of air-frying the pork is that the excess fat drips threw the basket and onto a tray. Unlike broiling the pork in the oven, it’s not sitting in its own fat so it’s certainly less greasier than the ones we buy from the restaurant (although those are absolutely delicious, don’t get us wrong).
I was intimidated the first time the hubby showed me how to make this, but it’s all about quality ingredients, a little love, and a bit of time!
Nice cut of pork belly with the skin. Usually I get the size of about a large rectangular tupperware.
About 2-3 tsp of Chinese cooking wine
A few splashes for white vinegar
Air fryer, of course (although this can be done in the oven at the hottest temp, but air frying is a lot easier)
Meat poker (or whatever the term is for it)
Make sure that the pork belly is clean and dry. I use paper towels to help ensure that it’s dry enough to work with! With the meat poker, you want to ensure that the poker only pierces the skin and does not go all the way through to the meat. The idea is to puncture some holes into the skin only so that when it goes into the air fryer, it’ll bubble up and get crunchy. This is a great way to take out your aggression because pork skin is rather tough (still, just be careful!) and/or get a nice decent workout in for your arms. We just had fun with it and went at the pork skin for about a few minutes.
On your working surface, place some paper towels and flip the pork over so that the skin is on the paper towel. From here on out, you want to keep the skin as dry as possible. The paper towel will help absorb any liquids that we use so that it doesn’t touch the skin.
Using the Chinese cooking wine, ladle the liquid over the meat/belly side of the pork and massage it into the meat. This will help get rid of that “porky” smell while at the same time make it easier for spices to stick.
Mixing the five spice powder, white pepper and salt together, rub the spice into the meat. Do not season the skin. Make sure you rub the seasoning into every nook and cranny of the meat!
Once done, flip the meat over and wrap it up in aluminum foil, leaving the skin exposed so that we can dry it out in the fridge overnight. When wrapping the foil, leave a little wall as we’ll need that later.
The next day when you want to eat the pork, take it out of the fridge and splash the surface of the skin with white vinegar. Rub it into the surface of the skin. This will help it cook more evenly.
With the large coarse sea salt, add a thick layer on top of the pork skin and then place it into the air-fryer. We set it at 350F for 20 minutes with the salt.
Then take it out, wipe out the salt crust and remove the foil so that you only have the meat. Then crank up the heat to 400F and air-fry for another 20 minutes or so to ensure that the skin puffs up and is crispy. Now, honestly every air-fryer can work differently.
The results are honestly so damn good! I highly recommend you try it with the air-fryer!