Siu Yuk
Roast pork belly with skin blistered into a crackling you can hear from across the room, cut into cubes. Cantonese, and it is entirely about drying the skin.
Photograph credit: Siu yuk (燒肉) - Roasted pork by logatfer · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Flickr · this resized copy is shared under the same licence
What to Put on the Table With Siu Yuk
- Steamed rice
- Mustard and sugar
- Blanched greens
Sides from the same cuisine on this site: Bok Choy with Garlic, Cabbage Stir Fry with Garlic, Chinese Steamed Eggs.
Making Siu Yuk, Step by Step
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Blanch the pork skin side down in boiling water 4 minutes, then lift it out and dry it thoroughly.
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Prick the skin all over, hundreds of times, with a meat pricker or clean needle, going through the skin but not into the meat.
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Score the meat side in a shallow lattice and rub in the fine salt, five-spice, sugar, white pepper, wine and bean curd.
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Turn it skin up, brush the skin with the vinegar and rub the coarse salt over.
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Refrigerate it uncovered on a rack 24 hours.
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Brush the salt off the skin and pat it completely dry.
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Roast skin up at 160°C / 320°F fan / 180°C / 355°F / gas 4 for 70 minutes.
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Raise the oven to 250°C / 480°F fan / 270°C / 520°F / gas 10 and roast 20 minutes more, until the skin has blistered right across and crackles.
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Rest 15 minutes, then cut into 2 cm cubes with a heavy cleaver, skin side up.
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Serve with mustard and a small dish of sugar for dipping.
Related guide: Prep, cook and total time.
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A Few Notes
Hundreds of holes in the skin, and not one into the meat.
A full day uncovered. Damp skin cannot crackle.
Moderate first, maximum last.
Storing and Reheating
Refrigerated for 3 days. Re-crisp in a very hot oven, never a microwave.
Questions and Answers
How long does Siu Yuk take to make?
30 minutes of preparation and 1 hour 30 minutes of cooking, plus 24 hours 15 minutes of drying the skin uncovered in the fridge, so allow 26 hours 15 minutes from start to finish. The recipe serves 8.
The Numbers per Serving
No nutrition figures are given for this recipe: they cannot be worked out reliably from its ingredient list (some ingredient lines cannot be read). Why some recipes have none.
Your notes on this recipe
Cooked this? Keep a note for next time
Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published ; last changed .
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