Korean Oven Roasted Pork Belly

Pork belly lovers, rejoice! This Korean style oven roasted pork belly is super easy, super fast, and super delicious. Well, don’t count calories when eating this, but once in a while, indulging in yummy pork belly dish like this is okay. And, you can cut this into thin slices and stuff it in your favorite sandwich and pair it with the equally easy and delicious spicy onion salad, that way, the calorie count can be lowered but you still end up with lip smacking meal.

Prepping and roasting/baking the pork belly

For the pork belly roast, you will need 1 kilogram of pork belly. I bought mine from Costco, and they already come in thin cuts, so there is no need to cut anymore. If yours come in one big slab, I suggest cutting them into thinner cuts so the cooking time is short. If you want to leave it in one big slab, increase cooking time, just make sure the inner temperature reaches 63-71 Celsius (145-160 Fahrenheit), you don’t want to end up with undercooked meat and risk food poisoning.

Let’s make our marinade for the pork bellies. You will need:

• doenjiang or Korean soy bean paste (like this or this)
• honey
• oil
• grated garlic
• grated ginger

Here is the step-by-step from marinating to roasting:

1. Mix all the marinating sauce ingredients in a mixing bowl, add the pork bellies and coat really well, and marinate for 15 minutes.
2. You can preheat the oven now, and it should reach desired 218 Celsius (425 Fahrenheit) when the pork is finished marinating.
3. Meanwhile, line your baking tray with aluminum foil, and place a wire rack that fits in the tray. Spray or brush the wire rack with oil to prevent sticking.
4. Place the pork belly on top of the wire rack, and roast/bake.

Preparing the onion salad

Meanwhile, let’s make the onion salad:

1. Thinly slice 200 gram onion and 100 gram shallot. Soak in plenty of cold water for 10 minutes to remove bitterness. Drain well. If you want a milder onion taste, you can increase the soaking time up to 30 minutes.
2. Mix together onion and shallot with gochugaru (Korean chili flakes), sugar, soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil, toasted sesame seeds, and ground black pepper.
3. Chill in the fridge until needed.

The onion salad is usually served chilled, and goes extremely well with the roast pork bellies.

Serving Korean roasted pork belly together with onion salad

Once the pork belly is out from the oven, let it rest first for 10 minutes. Then cut into thin slices. Serve the pork belly together with chilled spicy onion salad and steamed white rice. If you want, you can also serve with hamburger buns and make for an unusual and interesting way to serve the pork belly, of course don’t forget to put in the spicy onion salad into your hamburger buns.