Today, we’re diving into the world of Sous Vide, a technique that’s all about precision, patience, and, most importantly, incredibly delicious results. I’ll share with you the secrets of making a stunning Sous Vide Pork Belly that’s perfect for tacos – a recipe that’s as fun to prepare as it is to eat! You’ll see how Sous Vide takes the guesswork out of cooking, giving you pork belly that’s perfectly tender every single time. Whether you’re new to this method or a seasoned pro, this recipe is going to elevate your pork belly game to a whole new level.
What is Sous Vide?
Sous Vide (pronounced “soo veed”) is a method of cooking that allows you to create foods that are perfectly cooked, at an exact temperature in a water bath. That means the most perfect steaks, impossibly tender, yet juicy brisket, and velvety smooth pork belly that melts in your mouth.
Here’s a video to explain:
Recommended Sous Vide Class
I can’t say enough good things about ChefSteps. I’ve known about ChefSteps for awhile, from Tim Ferriss’ book, The 4-Hour Chef (btw, Tim mentions us in his book in the steak chapter – he features our steak salting method.) But it wasn’t until last week that I watched a class online. This is not a paid endorsement — I’m just a massive fan.
You can even watch their beginner Sous Vide class for free! I’ve already learned sous vide techniques beyond the steak and salmon.
Anova Sous Vide
For this recipe, we used the Anova Culinary Precision Cooker (fancy name for a sous vide appliance) and loved the easy-to-use interface and dials. This particular model is no longer offered, but you can find the newer models here.
How to Sous Vide Pork Belly
Buy a nice piece of pork belly (this is where bacon comes from!) I like to use a handful kosher salt and “exfoliate” the pork skin. Here’s why you should do this, especially with chicken. It’s not a must, but I like to get the skin clean and scrubbed.
I made two versions of this pork belly. One with garlic, ginger, green onion, orange peel, soy sauce and honey:
And the other with prepared Char Siu (Chinese BBQ) sauce.
With either sauce, the cooking. method is the same. Add the pork belly and sauce into a vacuum bag.
Seal the vacuum bag. Schmush the sauce to evenly distribute on both sides of the pork belly.
Fill pot with water, set the Anova Sous Vide to 158F. Place the bags into pot. Use clips to secure the bags so that they don’t move around too much and to ensure each bag has enough room for water to circulate. Cook for 16 hours.
Don’t Do This
In an effort to minimize water loss through evaporation, I covered the pot with tin foil.
I threw a couple of dish towels on top to keep the tin foil in place. Bad idea. After 8 hours, enough condensation had built up on the underside and edges of the tin foil, that the towel began absorbing that water. Then, the towels became soaked and water started dripping down on my counter.
Instead, use tin foil, but fit it INSIDE the pot, just crumple the edges so that it fits on top of the water and inside the pot. It won’t be a perfect, snug fit, but it will help minimize water loss.
A Few Tips
- When cooking sous vide for a long time period, anything over 8 hours, I like to use a vacuum seal bag. You can also use a heavy duty sealable freezer bag, but double-bag.
- Cut your vacuum bag 6″ larger than you need, use the excess bag to clip to the side of your pot, so that the bag stays put — and just in case the seal is not completely tight, prevent spillage.
- Check your water level periodically. Top off as needed. If the water level is too low, the pork belly will not cook evenly or properly.
- Is cooking 16 hours per the recipe absolutely necessary? No! The longer you sous vide, the more the collagen will break apart and meat will be fork tender. Cook too long: and you’ll get a mushy mess. Cook too short: the meat will be chewy and tough. For example, do you enjoy a nice, meaty strip steak that you can dig into? Then 1 hour per inch is about right. If you cook the same strip steak for 12 hours, you’ll be able to cut the steak with a fork, not quite the texture I enjoy for a steak, but one that I would like for pork shoulder. So, timing and temperature depends on the cut of meat AND the desired texture. For pork belly, 16 hours for pork belly falls right in the middle of that spectrum. Delicate and tender, yet retains its structure so that you can slice and sear without breaking apart. The wiggle room for cooking time is pretty lax, anywhere between 12-20 hours will still be good.
After 16 hours, remove pork belly from bag. I like to reserve the tasty juices. Slice thinly, about 1/4″. The pork belly is smooth, still firm in structure, yet unbelievably tender. You want pork belly that you can gently bite into, not just instantly melt in your mouth.
The last step is to heat a sauté pan or frying pan (I prefer the high sides of a sauté pan – you’ll contain the fatty splatter better.) and sear both sides before serving. The full recipe is below at the end of this post.
To serve, I like to keep it simple. Pork belly is very rich, fatty and savory. You need to pair it with something light, bright and acidic, otherwise, like the rich, dense chocolate cake, you can only have a few bite before it’s overwhelming.
I like serving pork belly with a super quick pickle – julienned bell pepper and cucumber tossed in a little seasoned rice vinegar. Warm flour or corn tortillas make it a simple hand-food. Super curly, crisp-crunchy green onion is made by soaking slivers of green onion in ice water. On the side, chili sauce and pickled ginger.
Do you love these eco-friendly bamboo plates? It’s from RestaurantWare. The plates and dishes are sturdy – and reusable when you hand wash.
Sous Vide Pork Belly Recipe (Taco)
Ingredients
- 1 pound pork belly
- 16 small flour tortillas
- 1 cucumber, julienned
- 1 bell pepper, cored and julienned
- 2 tablespoons seasoned rice vinegar
- 2 stalks, green onion (scallion)
VERSION 1:
- 1/4 cup prepared Char Siu sauce
VERSION 2:
- 2 stalks green onion, minced
- 2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 tablespoons soy sauce
- 2 tablespoons honey
Instructions
- Place pork belly in a vacuum seal bag. Slather your desired sauce (Char Siu or Soy/Honey) on both sides of the pork belly. Seal the bag and prepare your sous vide machine to run at 158F for 16 hours. Make sure you have enough water in the pot, topping off as needed. When done, open bag, reserving the Char Siu sauce in the bag. Slice the pork belly into 1/4".
- To make the slaw, mix the cucumber and the bell pepper in a bowl, and toss with seasoned rice vinegar. For the green onion, slice as thinly as possible at a steep angle. Fill a small bowl with ice water, and add the sliced green onion.
- When ready to serve, add the pork belly to a frying pan, then turn on the heat to medium. The pork belly will slowly caramelize, and fat will render as it heats up with the pan. Cook until browned, about 2 minutes. Flip and brown other side.
- Drain the green onion from the ice water. Assemble tacos with warmed flour tortillas, pork belly, slaw and curly, crunchy green onion.
Notes
Did you try this recipe? Please leave a star rating in the recipe card below and leave a review in the comment section! I always appreciate your feedback and I know other readers do, too!
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This method of cooking is AMAZING! Not only is pork belly the best I just did up a London Broil at 133 degrees for 11 hours. Seriously better than a filet. GREAT recipe…thank you! I have the Anova and LOVE LOVE LOVE IT. Have given it as gifts and will again this year.
Thank you so much Denise!
Sous vide cooking is phenomenal. I’ve just starting cooking sous vide and have invested in the Anova. It’s unbelievable. I don’t know how I’ve lived this long without this style of cooking.
Pork Belly comes with the skin on. After cooking sous vide, will a quick saute allow the skin to get that crispy texture that pork belly is known for?
You can get that crackling skin in the broiler!
For a lid to my pot, I use a disposable foil pizza pan, cut a hole for the Anova. It’s reusable. It worked great.
Nice brief introduction to the sous vide method. I have a PolyScience machine — not the top of the line one for restaurants, but still when I bought it there were only a couple of choices out there whereas now there are many choices at much lower price points. The machine — I think it is the Sous Vide Supreme — which has its own container with lid is not nearly as flexible a machine to use. First of all it is bulky where as the newer types are easy to store in a drawer. Second, the Supreme is one size — whether you are cooking a dozen eggs or a couple of lamb shoulders. Whereas the sticks can be attached to a large pot or lexan container. I think probably the biggest difference among the various stick types is that the more expenisve ones circulate a larger amount of water and also hold the water at more precise temperatures — sometimes as precise as one tenth of a degree. Most of us don’t need such complete precision, but certainly within 1/2 a degree is good. As for not being able to cover the pot, I use plastic wrap and stretch it across the pot and around the sous vide. Even if there is a small opening, it isn’t enough to matter. You can see through it to make sure the water is circulating and your vacuum bags haven’t clumped up together, you can pull it aside if you want and since it doesn’t touch the surface of the water, there is no worry about plastics and carcinogens. I use the machine a great deal and find the PolyScience app — sadly only for iPhone or iPad — a great help: you plug in the type of food, thickness, and a number of other options and it gives you the time you will need. If you are interested in sous vide techniques, it is worth checking out for all the help it gives in figuring out how to get the results you want.
As for cooking in glass, the problem is that air surrounding the food is an insulator. That is why you want a vacuum bag — no air around your fish or meat, or whatever, so the food temperature rises to exactly the same temperature as the water. Putting a piece of meat in a glass jar, covering it and then lowering it into the sous vide water will not work because there would be too much air in the jar. Filling the jar with liquid would simply mean you were poaching everything. Read the information that was given by one of the respondents and see if that allays any fears.
And one last thing: although having a chamber vacuum is lovely it certainly isn’t necessary — an ordinary household vacuum works well unless there is a huge amount of liquid in the bag.
The stars are aligning! Yesterday I found sliced pork belly at Costco. Today I followed a link on your website and got a $50 Father’s Day discount for the Anova Precision Sous Vide device! My question, however, is how do I determine the timing since the pork belly is already sliced, and some of the pieces are much thicker than others? Can’t wait to try the Pork Belly Tacos!
Hi Folly, what good luck! The pork belly at Costco is probably sold for people wanting to make their own bacon. It will work for this recipe, too. Keep the pork belly slices together, like a block. Just follow the recipe the same way.
Thank you so much for this post, Jaden. I’ve been using my convection/combination steam oven to cook sous vide as I’ve had several enquiries about it (I work as a home economist teaching people how to use their new ovens & other appliances), so I’m really excited to give this a go! I’d like to be able to tell clients (& blog readers) their sous vide options aren’t limited to beef and salmon – pork belly seems the perfect thing to add as it’s so versatile in terms of serving options!
This recipe was fantastic! Thank you!
I don’t own a sous vide and don’t know how I will fit that in my kitchen just now with all the gadgets I have. But your thorough and helpful write up on it makes me want to own one. And that pork belly recipe is just calling out to me. I’m bookmarking this post so I’ll know what to get when the time comes. Will share this with my niece who just got one, too. Thanks, Jaden!
Fantastic! I am getting hungry just reading this post! I learned so much about the Sous Vide cooking method! I honestly loved the lesson and the wealth of information! I am someone who has over used my slow cooker! Great recipe and thanks for sharing!
Sounds delicious. Is there another way of cooking the pork rather than marinating in plastic for 16 hours? I won’t even store food in plastic never mind cook in it. Cancer risk is way too high.
Hi Aurora – I’m not sure if there is a non plastic option. Let me know if you find one!
might work in a jar/water bath cooked at 160’f or is it vacuum sealed?
Sure, you can cook the pork belly in a water bath kept at the temperature, the sous vide machine keeps the water at that exact temperature. There’s a DIY sous vide option as well.
Thank you, Jaden. This is Amy from ChefSteps. I wanted to share some information from us as well about cooking in plastic, since this is a common question that comes up. We tackle that question here: http://blog.chefsteps.com/2014/09/5-common-misconceptions-about-sous-vide-cooking/. Another food blogger, mom and sous vider did some research, which you can also read here where she found some good options, like Jarden’s FoodSaver bags (which are made from polyethylene glycol and nylon, and don’t contain BPA, phthalates, or other plasticizers with EA-leaching additives.) http://nomnompaleo.com/post/12463202060/cooking-sous-vide-plastic-safety
Jaden,
You missed some very important points about cooking sous vide that will ruin a sous vide meal which the average person reading your blog who probably does not know specific information.
Chef Thomas Keller of French Laundry fame in his cookbook; “Under Pressure Cooking Sous Vide” highly recommends purchasing and using a “Chamber Vacuum Sealer” because a regular household vacuum sealer will suck all moisture out of the bag when sealing so you can’t add liquids, sauces even butter to the sealing bag.
Also with a “Chamber Vacuum Sealer” you can adjust the sealing pressure which you can’t do with a regular household vacuum sealer.
You also have your fancy high end induction stove which you could use for sous vide cooking and GE is adding Bluetooth temperature adjustment to their induction stoves this year. A temperature probe is added to pot of water on induction burner and via Bluetooth it controls the set water temperature
I have a Fagor (3rd largest appliance maker in Europe) 1800W Professional Induction Portable Stovetop Burner (normal $149.99 on sale $119.99) which sous vide my steaks perfectly to temperature in a pot of water which I can put a regular cover lid on to hold and maintain heat.
Hi Ken! Thanks for your comment – I saw that new GE connected stove top – that’s so cool! I have both a regular vacuum sealer and a chamber vacuum sealer – both work great. To control the suction with liquid, I stop the vacuuming 2 seconds before it’s complete by pressing the “Seal” button. It’s not perfect, sometimes I mistime, and end up with a few drops of liquid. But it works!
I have never heard of this method of cooking….so interesting!