The Meatwave

Before the pandemic hit, I had planned out my entire Meatwave calendar and recipe line-up for 2020. As each month stuck at home passed, I held onto hope that I'd be able to sneak in one or two cookouts, which kept me from cooking any of those pre-planned recipes for myself. By mid-summer though, it became clear that no large scale Meatwave would be taking place this year and I decide to finally dip into my recipe bank and enjoy some of those meals for just myself and the wife. One of the first things I picked off that long list were these pork belly burnt end banh mis, which made a great weekend project and I was rightfully drawn to because they ended up being so crazy delicious.

Beyond missing cooking for my friends, I was missing buying in large quantities like I often do for Meatwaves. So while at the butcher, instead of just buying the two to three pounds of pork belly I needed for this recipe, I purchased an entire ten pound piece. A little over two pounds went into these banh mis, five pounds were made into a standard bacon, 3 pounds into a pastrami bacon, and the skin we boiled, cooled, dried, and fried to make incredible pork rinds.

I wondered if I should do traditional barbecue flavored burnt ends here or lean fully into the flavors of Vietnamese cuisine. I chose the later and whipped up a marinade I've been using for a long time for my Vietnamese-flavored meats. It consists of a lot of fish sauce, whose strong and pungent flavor is tempered by water and sugar. A hefty amount of garlic adds the other defining characteristic of this marinade which is finished with a bit of black pepper.

I cut up my portioned piece of belly into roughly 2-inch cubes, which I put in a large Ziploc bag along with the marinade, then set in the fridge overnight to soak.

That downtime was perfect for getting the required pickled daikon and carrots ready. This isn't necessarily a hard thing to do, but I used to loath it because cutting the radish and carrots into small matchsticks was tedious work. Luckily I have a newish mandoline that had the perfect setting for cutting veggies into these thin, long strips, and in no time I had my daikon and carrot sliced, jarred, and covered with the rice vinegar-based pickling liquid.

It did feel a little weird getting the smoker up and running just to make a small-scale, single dinner. In normal times, I would have easily made at least five pounds of these burnt ends, which would have filled one-plus racks of the smoker. Never-the-less, I moved forward and placed these pieces of marinated pork into my Weber bullet that I had running at 225°F with a couple chunks of apple wood thrown on the fire.

I had a lot of ideas on how to sauce these, but in the end I thought there would already be so much going on in these sandwiches, that going simple would probably be best. That led me to create a glaze made of sugar, honey, fish sauce, and water. I combined these ingredients together in a small saucepan and brought them to a boil, then simmered until the sauce looked like it thickened a little, but didn't start to darken into caramel.

I usually advocate for using temperature as your primary guide to doneness, but for these burnt ends I went by time and look instead. I let the cubes of belly smoke until they were well browned and pretty soft and squishy, which took about three hours time.

At that point I transferred them in a square baking pan, poured in the glaze, and tossed gently until all the pieces looking glistening all over. I then covered the pan and placed it in the smoker and let it cook an additional 45 minutes, at which point any pieces of pork that were not totally tender before were now soft when squeezed with tongs. To finish setting the glaze, I uncovered the pan and let it smoke for 15 minutes more

I wasn't sure how well the Vietnamese marinade would translate to barbecue, so I couldn't wait to try a piece, which I did right away. The pork was incredibly savory with a supple texture that made me just want to pop one after another. So I wasted no time in assembling the sandwiches to get more pork in my belly as fast as possible. The construction went: spread mayo (I had mixed mine with a little bit of sriracha for added flavor) on both sides of a toasted baguette, top with cucumber slices and burnt ends followed by pickled daikon and carrot, fresh jalapeño slices, and some cilantro.

Man, this sandwich amazing. I think of banh mi often when I was something satisfying, full flavored, but also feels light, and this hit all of those points. The fatty belly was certainly more hearty than your average banh mi meat, but it didn't taste heavy handed or out of places thanks to the savory marinade and the contrasting fresh and light components like the cucumber and pickles. My only qualm with this banh mi was I wasn't able to get the right, lighter baguette it deserved, but the French version was easy to accept when what was inside delivered the all the usual banh mi flavor components. It does make me a little sad that this was meant to be shared with the crowds that usually gather in my backyard during the Meatwave season, but I can't say I regret venturing forth and making this for just me and the wife because it certainly injected some brightness into my day, not to mention filling some time we most all find excess of these days.

Published on Thu Sep 17, 2020 by Joshua Bousel

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