PORK BELLY RIBS RECIPE RECIPES

1. You need to take the pork out of the fridge about an hour before you cook it so factor that into your timetable, adding it to the 3 hours, give or take, that the pork will be in the oven. For now, unwrap it and lay it rind-side down on a large chopping board.

2. Peel the garlic cloves and drop them into the mortar part of a pestle and mortar, or into a bowl you can use with a stick blender. Add 2 tablespoons of the sea salt flakes (or 1 tablespoon of fine sea salt), the juniper berries and the stalks from your dill, and start either bashing, grinding and crushing or whizzing, as you prefer, until you have an aromatic green paste. It’s harder work with a pestle and mortar, but I adore making it this way: it makes my kitchen smell, rather invigoratingly, like a Nordic spa.

3. Take this mixture over to the pork, and where the butcher has sawn through the bones, you will have two long troughs to tuck the paste into. Run a knife through them if you need to open up the cut area a little more. Press the mixture evenly between them.

4. Push as many of the dill fronds into the paste as you can fit. Turn the pork rind side up. Rub the rind and sides of the pork with the remaining 1 tablespoon of sea salt flakes, (or 1½ teaspoons of fine sea salt).

5. Get out a large roasting tin – I use one measuring 34 x 37 x 5cm. Peel the onions, then cut each of them into 3 thick slices; you need these as a flavour platform, to prop up the pork. One end must be slightly higher than the other, so that any liquid pours off and doesn’t pool on the rind, so place the pork, rind-side up, on the onions, arranging the slices as you feel best achieves that.

6. Leave the pork in the tin for about 1 hour to lose its fridge chill and, when you’re not long off, heat the oven to 220.C/200.C Fan.

7. Pour the 250ml of just-boiled water into the roasting tin, cover the top tightly with foil, and cook in the hot oven for 45 minutes. It’s counter-intuitive, I know, but softening the rind now makes it crisp up unimaginably later.

8. When it’s had its 45 minutes, take the pork out of the oven and remove the foil; the rind should have softened and puffed up a little. Use a large sharp knife to define the squares on the rind, cutting a little deeper into the original scoring marks. Or if you didn’t get it done by the butcher, do your own scoring at this point, cutting the softened rind into 2cm squares; it’s a curiously pleasant sensation.

9. Turn the oven down to 170.C/150.C Fan. Put the pork back into the oven without the foil, but make sure first that it’s still perched, one end higher than the other, on the slices of onion.

10. Give the pork 2. hours at this temperature, by which time much of the fat should have rendered down, melting lusciously into the meat, and less lusciously into the tin, and the rind will be beginning to crackle. But if, when you poke the tip of a knife into the pork, it doesn’t feel tender yet, leave it in for another 30 minutes.

11. Turn the oven back up to 220.C/200.C Fan, and give the pork around 15 minutes – or a little longer if needed, but keep watch to make sure the rind doesn’t go too far and burn – until the crackling is deep gold and crunchy, and some of the little squares may have popped up.

12. Take the pork out of the oven and remove carefully to a carving board. Cut through both sides of each rib, down to where the butcher cut through the bones, to get a chunky rib section for each person. The crackling on the pork may make this tricky, so you can use poultry shears or kitchen scissors to cut through it – the splintering noise is rather splendid – before slicing down into the meat. This way each rib section gets a proper piece of crackling. Because the meat has to be so heavily salted to boost juiciness and flavour, most of the onions will be far too salty to serve. One or two will be perfect though, and divinely sticky with pork fat; you can share these out meagrely now, eat them yourself, or save them for sandwiches later.

Store – Refrigerate leftovers, covered, for up to 3 days. Reheat as directed in recipe until piping hot.