A cooking blog? Hardly. But this easy to knock up, Friday night air fried delight was too good not to share and if I can get this tester snack right then you've got no excuse!
Actually truth be told I love to cook, especially when I can get a little creative or get into something I've never tried. And today we're working with two things I'm only vaguely familiar with - pork belly and the household air fryer.
THE PORK BELLY
While I've bought plenty of the stuff before (and consumed much much more) usually it's my wife that either roasts this cut of meat up or slow cooks to perfection with it. But since she's working all day today, why not fill the house with delectable smells as soon as she walks in? And those wonderful aromas are going to be courtesy of this bad boy:
THE AIR FRYER
So once upon a time we had a working air fryer which we ended up selling because it fell out of use. Once we moved house again we realised how useful these things actually are and so we went out and bought another. Most of the time this one works with chips and chicken nuggets for the kids but on the rare occasion (like today) it'll venture into new territory like air frying up what will hopefully big a glorious batch of pork belly bites for dinner. (Plus some chips on the side and a little salad wouldn't go astray either.)
THE RECIPE
Is not mine. All credit goes to Amanda from I am Homesteader for the idea and you can find this knock out recipe right here. The only thing I've changed for the younger palates of this house is not adding any pepper to the coating (but still keeping the salt) and swapping out the canola oil for a couple of glugs of the olive variety, extra virgin if you please.
Also because my unit works in Celsius and not Fahrenheit, you're looking at a 200 degree cooking temperature for some nice crispy pork.
THE TRIAL PIECE
As much as I'd like to wing it completely tonight, I figured I could cook up a bit while prepping everything else. And so the first coated bit went in and came out every five mins for a bit of a look over.
5 MINS IN..
10 MINUTES IN
Mmmm, crisping around the edges nicely. But not ready yet, back in you go!
15 MINUTES IN
Very happy with how things are looking now, so much so that I actually stopped things there even though the recipe called for 20 mins cooking time. And the reasons I stopped it early were a) It looks bloody amazing already and b) That's one small bit getting all the air frying action and it's not spread over other pieces. Any more of that action and it may come out a little too crispy for my liking.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS?
Delicious. Meat was nicely cooked, a nice chewy edge to the fat and great colour on the outside. Cooked in an actual oven, I'd be looking forward to results like this. Possibly a little more seasoning needed here (even a light dust of chilli) but yeah, highly impressed. And this was just the test piece! I'll be back later on to document what the family thought after they get into it!
SO HOW'D WE GO?
Well good and bad. The bad was that I'd just started cooking and was just getting tucked into my first cooking beer of the evening when my wife called and asked if I could go and pick up the kids on account that she couldn't get there in time. So unfortunately the pieces got half cooked, stayed in the warm air fryer for 20 minutes and then resumed cooking as soon as I returned.
That extra stewing time probably didn't help but thankfully they were still crunchy by the second half of cooking and still tasty. They might have been a tad softer to chew through had they not spent the time in waiting though. Still the long wait benefited the chips!
After all the meal I can quite happily reveal I will definitely be doing this again! (Although I might make the bites a bit bigger - don't forget that shrinkage!)
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