English pork belly
Ingredients
250g soffrito
60g dark brown sugar
4 x 330ml tins of larger/beer/pale ale
1 large cinnamon stick broken in 2 or 2 normal sized cinnamon sticks
1 tsp white peppercorns
8 cloves
¼ tsp caraway seeds
2kg pork belly, scored across the top
Method
Preheat the oven to 160c. Put all the ingredients apart from the pork belly into an oven proof dish and stir. Put the pork belly in and seal with foil, you really need there to be no gaps and cook for 2½ hours.
Take the pork out of the oven, increase the heat to 220c, cut the foil carefully so that just the pork is poking out (I do this because then the liquid and veg won’t burn). Cook until the crackling is golden and crispy which will take between 45 minutes and 1 hour.
Rest for at least 20 minutes before cutting.