Roasted pork belly (or ’suiyok’) to me is consider to king of all meat, the most sinful and also is my ultimate favorite. I have traveled all over Klang valley to find all the best ’suiyok’ and at one time, I ate ’suiyok’ rice almost everyday. Having read all the blog lately that suggested home-made version and how easy it was, I decided to give it a try.

I bought 1 long cut of pork belly with about 5cm width. Cut it into half since it was too long for my puny oven.

I marinate it overnight in a fridge with some basic seasoning like fermented beancurd, oyster sauce, salt, pepper and five spice powder. Before roasting it in the oven, I poke some hole on the skin side then layer it with lots of very coarse salt. I have no idea why we need to use coarse salt instead of just normal fine salt.

I roasted it for 90min and it turns out to look like the real thing. Judging by the look, it does seem to be quite successful.

However, upon tasting it, it wasn’t what I expected. In fact, far from it. It tasted like those ’suiyok’ that you bought from the wet market. The porkey smell is still strong. Unlike those ’suiyok’ you get from normal chicken rice stall whereby it is very flavorful and free from porkey smell. And for some reason, the meat was kind of too chewy and hard. I expected tender and soft melt in your mouth kind of texture.

I don’t know what I did wrong or how I should improve it. Overall, I’m quite disappointed at my first attempt and worst, it created a mess inside my oven which I’m yet to clean it up.