Crispy Chinese Belly Pork with a lovely light dipping sauce – just 15sp!

Pork belly is such a delicious meat and is so cheap to buy. Usually I would think it would be something to make at the weekend when you have a bit more time, but the meat is so cheap and this recipe so simple, that there is no reason not to whack it out during the week as a bit of a mid-week treat. I’ve made pork belly a few times before and usually served it in a sticky sauce so this light and tasty dipping sauce was a lovely change and tasted amazing drizzled over the butternut squash wedges.

The recipe for the pork and dipping sauce is an old faithful from the good food website, I’ve simply added a few of my own low pp accompaniments. If you don’t fancy butternut squash and peas, you could serve it with rice and greens however I wanted to keep it as light and low pp as possible.

Ingredients
Serves 2 = 15sp each
For the pork
300g boned pork belly, skin on and scored
2 tsp Chinese five spice
For the dipping sauce
4 tbsp soy sauce (we used Kikkoman)
Thumb size piece of fresh ginger, grated
1 tbsp sweet chilli sauce
1 spring onion, finely chopped
To accompany
1 x Butternut squash, peeled and cut into wedges
80g fresh or frozen garden peas

Method
Rub your Chinese five spice and 2 tsp of salt into your pork and then pop into the fridge, uncovered, for at least two hours (the longer you leave it for the better, we usually leave it overnight). Then, when you are ready to cook, pop into a roasting tin making sure skin is exposed, turn your oven up to the maximum and pop the pork in for ten minutes. Then turn your oven down to 180c and cook for a further 1 ½ hours.

After the pork has been in the oven for half an hour, par boil your butternut squash wedges for five minutes, spread on a roasting tray, season well and pop into the oven with the pork. Have a peek at the pork and see if the skin is crispy, if not, turn the oven up to 220c and cook until crisp (make take up to twenty minutes but never has for me).

Just before everything in the oven is cooked, pop your peas on to boil for a few minutes. Then to make the dipping sauce, mix all the ingredients together with 2 tbsp of water and pop into a shallow bowl.

Serve everything piled nicely onto your plate with a little of the dipping sauce drizzled over and the rest ready to dip into in a bowl.

Enjoy!