How do cooks prepare belly pork in a restaurant?
In a similar style to the question on preparing risotto in restaurants..
When cooking belly pork, to a texture that's soft, tender and still moist, long cook times at a low temperature (around 150 degrees celsius for 3 to 4 hours) are generally required, yet when ordering it in a restaurant it obviously doesn't take that long to arrive at the table!
My question therefore is, what tricks or techniques do restaurant chefs use to serve belly pork on demand. Can it be cooled and re-heated later, or is there another "trick" that's used?
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No trick. It's par-cooked, cooled, and held cold until service. Then when it's on order, you finish the cooking. That is true for most long-cooked dishes.
Along with the braised suggestions in another answer. Another way of pre-cooking pork belly employed by some restaurants is to confit it in lard in a similar way to how you confit duck.
This requires a couple of days notice to prepare as you need to give it an overnight cure and then after the confit process let it cool and set in the fat but once done it will keep for quite a long time and when needed can be quickly fried to crisp up and reheat (using some of it's stored in lard as the fat to fry with).
This method provides a more unctious and rich pork belly but as you can imagine is even more calorific than braised pork belly.
This site has a recipe for confit pork belly that to top off the unhealthiness finishes the meat by crisping it in a deep fat fryer. I have yet to try it but I imagine it is amazing!
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