Pork Belly Meat Candy Tips

The modern day variation on brisket burnt ends

If you're making pork belly burnt ends for the first time, here are a few tips that will make it easier for you. Note that this is NOT a recipe, but rather some general tips to help you make the meat candy that will get people asking you to make again and again.

First, make sure that you are getting skinless pork belly. when I started initially making meat candy years ago, I had to get the slabs from a local Chinese market. While the price was fair, the slabs still had the outer pig skin on them and it took just as long to trim the outer skin off as it did to slice up the pieces. Make sure your pork belly, or pork side is skinless!

Second, to aid in cutting it up into chunks, stick your pork belly in the freezer for 20 minutes to a half hour before cubing. The cold will help to solidify the fat and make it easier to cut overall throughout the entire slab. Think for a minute how slick those last few pieces of bacon get in the pack when you're making bacon because they have come up to room temperature while you were cooking the rest of the pack. You want to try to keep the entire slab as solid as possible while cutting so that you can get reasonably uniform pieces.

Third, everyone has different tastes. For me, I like to put my seasoned pork belly cubes on the smoker at 230 F for roughly 3 to 3.5 hours until the internal temp hits 200 to 205F. That will help to render down all of that fat within the pieces and give you a nice bark to go into your sauce / glaze step. If you prefer to keep a bit more of the fat in the cubes initially, pull yours at 170 - 180F. Just be aware that you'll want to keep them a bit longer in the braising stage with the foil and sauce to finish the break down of that collagen and fat.

Fourth, when they're all done, serve them up and watch them disappear.