So I went to Paul Qui's East Side Kings food truck in Austin behind the Liberty Bar and it kind of changed my life. I got his signature Pork Belly bun and the Beef Tongue Bun. So I got inspired and decided I would give them a shot myself. The recipe I used is from David Chang's restuarant Mom***u Noodle Bar in NYC. Basically roasted pork belly on a steamed Chinese bun with pickled cucumber, scallions, hoisin sauce, and saracha. They turned out phenomenal and I couldn't make them as fast as they were being eaten. I still need to learn the art of perfecting the pork belly, but I was happy.

Anyone tried these or have any secrets to roasting the pork? I found that the fat was mostly inedible so I only served the meatier portions. Here is a pic of the final product:



The hardest part was finding the frozen buns. Ended up finding them at a Vietnamese market.

IIRC, the pork belly has to be braised for quite a while in order for the fat to render. You can roast it without braising it, but it has to be done at a low enough temperature for the fat to render out. Looking at the picture, it looked like it just needed to braise longer.

[This message has been edited by HTownAg98 (edited 6/4/2012 2:15p).]

Yeah, I figured I needed to cook it longer but I followed the recipe anyways. It called for an hour at 450 and an hour and a half at 250. The meat of the belly was excellent but I had to cut a lot of the fat off.

[This message has been edited by Hudson2508 (edited 6/4/2012 2:15p).]

Here's the recipe from epicurious. It's the exact one out of the Momo cookbook. Me thinks you got a bad recipe.
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Pork-Belly-Buns-240258
It calls for braising for 2.5 hours, and then roasting for another half hour.

That's interesting, it's almost opposite of the recipe I found which I thought was straight from his cookbook. I will have to try that next time and see how it differs. I liked how it came out but like I said, I felt like I wasted a lot of the belly.

food boner