This is a recipe I picked up a long time ago from a Gordon Ramsey video when I first got into cooking and I didn’t have a clue who to learn from. Gordon Ramsey is a staple in the UK, and it’s funny that despite his ubiquity on TV and Youtube, I have actually cooked very few of his dishes.

This pork belly recipe is adapted quite a bit but it works well because it gets the skin very crispy and only uses one pan. It also gives you a great soup for the next day.

Ingredients (roughly):

• 1kg Pork belly, without the bones
• A fennel bulb
• Two large carrots
• Two onions
• Fennel seeds or star anise (or coriander seeds)
• Some cardomam pods
• Garlic bulb, pureed
• 375ml of dry white wine
• Stock, about a litre
• 1tbsp cider vinegar

1. Buy a kilo of pork belly for about 3 hungry people or four less hungry people. Ask the nutcher to score it, but if you get it from the supermarket you can score it yourself with a sharp knife or a razor blade. Make lines about 2cm apart and do the same in the other direction to create a diamond pattern.
2. Salt the pork belly and leave it in the fridge for a few hours if you have time.
3. For the pan, find something you can use both on the hob and in the oven. I used a big steel pan but you can also use your metal roasting tray. If you don’t have something that can do both just cook everything on the hob and transfer into a preheated oven dish.
4. Heat some oil in the pan and add spices. You can use anything with a bitter, aniseed notes. Cardamom pods and star anise were in the original recipe I saw (I think), but I also just used fennel seeds and coriander seeds if that’s all I have.
5. Add sliced fennel and onion to the pan, and large carrot chunks. Cook everything gently until soft. Add garlic to softened vegetables.
6. Get your pork belly out the fridge, pat it dry (there should be big water drops all over) and push all the vegetables to the side of the pan. Add the pork belly skin side down on a good high heat, pushing the skin into contact with a spatula. Let it cook for about 5 minutes until the skin starts getting translucent and brown.
7. Turn the belly back over. Add some salt. Move the vegetables around the belly to give it a little nest. Add half a bottle of dry white wine, a splash of cider vinegar and as much chicken or vegetable stock to bring the liquid up to the edge of the skin, but not touching it.
8. Bring this to a boil and then place in a preheated oven at 190°C for anywhere between 2-3 hours. It always feels a bit different depending on the oven and size of the belly slab. You’ll know when it’s done as the skin will be very dark, puffy and glasslike.
9. Serve with mash and green. salad, or whatever you like.

For the soup the next day, I leave all of the cooking liquid and vegetables in a tupperware box and stick in the fridge. I don’t serve the vegetables with the pork purely because I like it so much more with the soup, and I’ve normally made a side dish to accompany the pork anyway.

When you take it out the fridge, it looks like this:

This is all the fat that you can skim off! I’m no dietician but I feel like nearly all the fat ends up being removed in this way, and the soup feels so clear and light. I add some herbs and chillies to it and it sort of reminds me of when I ate pho in Vietnam – it’s not as good or rich as that, but it’s a very light tasting broth with vegetables. You could easily add any grains to it, noodles, rice or pasta, or even use it as a stock if you strained out the vegetables.