Winter Warmth: Fennel-Braised Pork Belly Stew

My husband makes bacon. So we go through a fair amount of pork belly in year's time, even when we're doing 12 to 14 pounds at a time. (Our friends are often happy recipients, and between trips to the beach and summer camping with big groups, we can go through a lot.) The thing is, he likes to square off the sometimes-raggedy ends of the bellies before curing them, which means there are several odd chunks of belly that pile up in the freezer.

Browning the belly.

Rummaging through the freezer the other day, I realized we had accumulated close to three pounds of these frozen ends, including recent trimmings from some gorgeous Joyce Farms pork belly, whose regenerative agricultural practices are beyond impressive. So I began scouring through online recipes that didn't require hours of prep time or, heaven forfend, a trip to the store.

Luckily I'd picked up a couple of bulbs of fennel at the farmers' market, and when I saw a fennel-braised belly from Mario Batali on the list, I gave it a look. In typical Batali fashion (don't get me started) it was packed with loads of over-the-top spicing—three tablespoons of chopped rosemary plus three tablespoons of ground fennel seeds in the rub, then another tablespoon of ground fennel seeds in the braise. Really, Mario?

Greatly reducing the amount of ground fennel and cutting the rosemary by a third balanced out the flavors and avoided what could have been a bitter aftertaste in the braise. Oh, and the finished bacon? Spectacular, as always.

Fennel-braised Pork Belly Stew

For the rub:
1/2 c. brown sugar
1 Tbsp. fennel seeds, toasted and ground
3 Tbsp. salt
2 Tbsp. fresh rosemary, finely chopped
2 tsp. red pepper flakes

For the braise:
2 Tbsp. olive oil
3 lbs. pork belly (skinless)
2 bulbs fennel
2 carrots, quartered and sliced crosswise into 1/2” pieces
1 onion, chopped in 1/2” dice
4 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
1 12-oz. bottle beer (amber or not-too-hoppy winter ale is great)
Salt to taste

To make the rub, toast fennel seeds in a small pan over medium-high heat, moving the pan back and forth to keep them moving, until they just start to color and smell wonderful. (You want to avoid any smoke, which indicates burning.) Remove from heat, cool slightly and grind in spice grinder. (We have an inexpensive electric coffee grinder dedicated to grinding spices.) In a small bowl, combine with remaining rub ingredients and stir.

Cut 1/2” deep, diagonal grid into both sides of the pork belly. Cover both sides with spice rub.

Heat olive oil over medium-high heat in large Dutch oven until it shimmers. Add pork belly and sear on both sides. Remove to plate when well-browned. Add onions to pot and sauté until translucent, scraping up browned bits from searing the belly. Add garlic until it is warmed and fragrant. Add remaining vegetables and seared pork belly. Pour beer over the top, bring to a boil and reduce heat to simmer. Cover and cook for 1 1/2 to 2 hrs. Adjust salt to taste as necessary.

If you like, you can chop the nearly-falling-apart belly into biggish chunks before serving. I served it with roasted slices of garnet yam, but next time I'm going to give Hank Shaw’s squash dumplings (without the mushrooms) a try; you could make them while the stew cooks.

Taking the Cure: Home-Smoked Bacon

There are very few things that draw me like a moth to a flame like the smell of smoked meat. I've been known to wander around the neighborhood, my nose in the air, tracking the smell of cooking meat as it wafts on the breeze until I locate the source of the intoxicating aroma. Even my dogs start looking at me askance as we cross streets willy-nilly, though their puzzlement is likely a fraction of the muttering from other pedestrians I'd occasionally (and even literally) run into.

Fresh pork belly.

Bacon was high on the list of favorite smoked meats, and I'd sampled all kinds from Trader Joe's to Gartner's, and quizzed friends on their favorite sources. Then Dave found a smoker on Craigslist and got a yen to try making it himself, with, yes, lots of encouragement from me. That first batch, one slab weighing five pounds, was a smashing success, earning accolades from family and friends alike. Which, of course, encouraged him to make more, increasing the amount each time.

The experience of working with the smoker, and the resulting briskets, ribs (flat and rolled) and smoked albacore has begun pulling him away from briquets and into the realm of wood. He's now got sources for cherry, apple, hickory, oak and maple, with bags of same stashed alongside the smoker in the garage.

Cured belly ready for the smoker.

Today's batch of bacon—briquets providing the primary heat source, with chunks of dry apple wood soaked in water providing the smoke—was the biggest yet. Two full bellies weighing just shy of twenty pounds total, cured for a week in the fridge (details here) then smoked for a little over three hours. Which resulted in around 16 1/2 lbs. of finished bacon. Once they cool down, we'll slice them into one-pound chunks, then throw them in zip-lock freezer bags, except for a bit we may need for a completely homemade BLT or perhaps some carbonara.

Seriously, if you've been thinking about making your own bacon and you can get your hands on a smoker (I repeat: Craigslist), this is so easy to do and, as long as you follow the directions for the curing, a complete cakewalk. Your family and friends will thank you!

Gratuitous Seasonal Food Porn aka Dinner Last Night

Couldn't resist posting this: grilled local organic corn, garden tomatoes (Purple Cherokees, if you must know), pimientos de Padrón and…awesomeness itself…grilled pork belly. Truly and insanely delicious!

Hidden Gem: Eastmoreland Market & Kitchen

You'd think, wouldn't you, that someone who writes about local food and the best places to find it would have a comprehensive list of suggestions when the subject of lunch comes up. But when I get asked that very question, my mind inevitably goes blank. Lunch? Uh…um…

It happened again just the other day when my friend Kathryn and I were wandering around in Eastmoreland and we were getting a bit peckish. Jade Teahouse, a personal favorite, was nearby in Sellwood, as was the cart pod on 13th across from the Sellwood library. Just as we were getting into the car to head in that direction, I remembered that somewhere, tucked away among the stately homes on the curving, tree-lined streets of this neighborhood, was a charming gourmet grocery-cum-café.

Called the Eastmoreland Market & Kitchen, I'd been there a couple of times just after they opened and this felt like the right time to return. Plus at this point we'd been talking about food options for some time and it was making us ravenous. Luckily the menu board was packed with options from a burgers and a tasty-sounding muffuletta to a grilled chicken sandwich and a pork belly special.

We ordered at the counter and, after admiring the meats and cheeses in the long case (which of course made us even hungrier) and the imported pastas, condiments and even my favorite Spanish flatbreads (hungrier still!), we chose a table in the front window and were relieved by the prompt arrival of our lunch.

My pork belly sandwich (top photo) was stacked with meaty slices of perfectly braised meat and pickled vegetables laid between halves of a crisp-crusted ciabatta roll, a sandwich that would give Ben Dyer's famed Laurelhurst Market sandwiches a run for their money. Kathryn's grilled chicken (right, above) with goat cheese and house chutney was no slouchy effort, either, and satisfied both our hunger and the feeling that, at least yet, I haven't quite lost it altogether.

Details: Eastmoreland Market & Kitchen, 3616 SE Knapp. 503-771-1186.

The Best Bacon Ever

I'd been working on getting Dave to smoke some pork belly for at least a year. It's not that he didn't want to, or was just being intransigent about taking his wife's suggestion. After all, he has a full-time job that supports his family, and any free time has been subsumed by a passion for developing his own sourdough starter, using it to make some fine breads, English muffins and biscuits.

Ready to cure in the fridge.

And that's not to mention the cocktail research, which these days is focused on the subject of bourbons and bitters. But after buying him a couple of books on home charcuterie and sending links to online articles on the subject, I could see his interest shifting to a more active state. Then came the day that he announced he'd ordered five pounds of pork belly from New Seasons and needed to go on a hunt for curing salt.

If we were the types to plan ahead, there are myriad online retailers who carry this special combination of table salt and sodium nitrite or nitrate, dyed pink to distinguish it from other salts since it's apparently quite lethal. But because we subscribe to the last-minute school of life, a little research led us to The Meadow, Mark Bitterman's shrine to NaCl. Fortunately it's also close by, so we could run over and get back while the sourdough Dave was working on that day (I didn't say he gave up his infatuation) finished rising.

A sample of the finished product.

The only problem we ran into was finding a bag that would fit the five-pound slab, since it needed to cure in the fridge for a week. Now, we could have cut it in half and slipped it into two one-gallon bags, but that would have reduced the impressive feat of slapping the whole monster on the grill. So not being able to find the 2-gallon bag called for in the recipe, we used a large size oven bag sold for turkeys.

Other than that it was rubbing the slab with the salt mixture, putting it in the fridge in the duct tape-sealed bag and turning it daily for a week. Smoking took about three hours, and then we cooled it, whacked it up into one pound chunks and put it int the freezer. A sample we fried up on the spot indicated a deeply but not overly smoky belly that one volunteer said was some of the best he's ever had. I'd say it was definitely worth waiting for.

Home-Cured Bacon

Adapted from Michael Ruhlman's Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing

• Order five pounds of fresh pork belly from your grocery store, the pork guy at your farmers market, or from a local butcher shop.


• Buy a box of 2-gallon zip-top bags if you don’t have a container big enough to hold the belly or use oven bags meant for turkey.

Mix the following together in a small bowl:
2 oz. (1/4 c. Morton or Diamond Crystal coarse kosher) salt
2 tsp. pink curing salt #1
4 Tbsp. coarsely ground black pepper
4 bay leaves, crumbled
1 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 c. brown sugar, honey or maple syrup
5 cloves garlic, smashed with the flat side of a chef’s knife
2 Tbsp. juniper berries, lightly crushed (optional)
5 to 10 sprigs fresh thyme (optional)




Put the pork belly in the zip-top bag or in an oven bag. Rub the salt and spice mixture all over the belly. Close the bag (if using the oven bag Dave recommends black duct tape for the aesthetics) and stick it in the refrigerator for seven days (get your hands in there and give the spices another good rubbing around midway through). After seven days, take it out of the fridge, rinse off all the seasonings under cold water and pat it dry.

For cooking in the oven:
Put it on a sheet tray and put it in the oven (put it on a rack on a sheet tray if you have one) and turn the oven on to 200°. (if you want to preheat the oven, that’s fine, too). Leave it in the oven for 90 minutes (or, if you want to measure the internal temperature, until it reaches 150 degrees F.). Let it cool, cut it into usable chunks (we did approx. 1-lb. chunks) and refrigerate or freeze it until you’re ready to cook it.

For cooking in a smoker:
Build a fire from charcoal or hickory chunks. When the temperature inside the smoker reaches 125-150°, put the pork belly on the top rack. Maintain the 125-150° temperature inside the smoker for approximately 3-3 1/2 hrs. or until the internal temperature of the belly reaches 150°. Remove and cool. Slice into usable chunks and refrigerate or freeze.