Pork Belly Burnt Ends
Who’s ready to learn how to make these delicious little pieces of meat candy?! These are probably my favorite thing I’ve ever cooked. If you love bacon like me (if someone cut me, I’d probably bleed bacon), you’re going to want to get down on these ASAP. Let’s go!
Pork Belly Burnt Ends
Ingredients
- 3lbs - Skinless Pork Belly
- BBQ rub of your choice (something sweet works best)
- BBQ sauce of your choice
- 1/4 Stick - Non-Salted Butter
- 1TBS - Brown Sugar
Instructions
- Get your smoker going at 275F (We're cooking pork here, so cherry is my wood of choice. Up to you though, boo boo).
- While the smoker is heating up, cut your pork belly into 1 inch cubes.
- Season all sides of your pork belly cubes with a BBQ rub of your choice (personally, Caribeque's Honey Heat Rub is hands the best for this. Check them out and give them some love!).
- Place your cubes on a wire rack (this step is totally optional, but it makes moving these things around so much easier).
- Place your wire rack full of porky goodness onto your smoker and let cook for around 2ish hours (This obviously isn't exact. You're looking for color and fat render here).
- Once your cubes are becoming probe tender and have a beautiful bark on them, remove from the smoker and place in a foil pan.
- In your foil pan, pour in your BBQ sauce, a few pads of butter, your brown sugar, and a little more of your rub.
- Mix this around with your belly bites, and put the foil pan back onto the smoker for about another hour.
- Once the sauce has caramelized on your bites and the bites are niiiiiiiice and tender, pull them off to reset for a bit.
- Serve and enjoy!
Lil bit of background:
If you’re like me, you’ve probably seen these floating around the internet and making your mouth water. If you’re also like, pork belly is not easy to find in your area (thanks a lot WV). Luckily, you can order some large quantities online, or if you have a butcher, they should be able to hook you up with a nice belly and even remove the skin for you. If you can only find them with the skin on, don’t worry. Separate that skin and save it for some cracklins! Anyway, pork belly is where bacon is made. It’s cured, smoked, and packaged up for you to enjoy with your breakfast, burgers, or wrapping other delicious foods to make them even better. Whatever your little heart desires, really. But here, the idea is to take the belly before that whole process, smoke it, and render it down into delicious little bites of candied piggy heaven. So let’s get into the cooking process.
Trust the process:
As with the majority of the recipes you’ll be finding on this website, these are cooked on a smoker. I’m sure there might be other ways to do this, but I can only give you my experience and that has been with using my Traeger pellet smoker. Once they’ve been smoked, you’re gonna toss ‘em in a foil pan; coat them with some BBQ sauce; add some butter, BBQ rub, and brown sugar; and then toss them back on the smoker to caramelize and finish up. You’ll be left with some of the most delicious little pig candy you’ve ever had. Believe in the Manimal, trust in the Manimal.
The cook:
To start off, you’re gonna want to get that smoker heated to 275F. Since we’re cooking pork, I like to use a nice fruit wood. Cherry is typically my choice for anything pork related on the pit, so that’s what I’m recommending here.
While your pit is coming up to temp, you’re gonna slice your pork belly into 1 inch strips and then cube those strips into inch cubes. These might seem pretty big when you’re doing it, but remember that pork belly has quite a bit of fat and that fat is going to render down. This will make those cubes shrink up a bit leaving the perfect sized bite.
After you’re cubed up, coat those leel beauties in your favorite BBQ rub. I prefer to use a sweet rub for these, and Caribeque’s Honey Heat rub is hands down the best in the game. Check them out. They’re amazing.
Take your pig cubes and place them on a wire rack. This is by no means necessary in this cook, but believe me when I say that it makes things WAY easier when you’re moving and transferring these around. Take your wire rack and get everything on your smoker.
You’re gonna want to let these go around 2-3 hours. Make sure you keep an eye on them and spritz them with your liquid of choice (again, mine is always typically a mixture of water and apple cider vinegar). You want your little guys to take on some good color and bark, but you don’t want them to burn.
Once you have some beautiful barky belly bites that are basically already probe tender, you’re going to remove the wire rack and transfer you little bundles of joy over into a foil pan for some extra TLC. TLC, in this case, is some sweet BBQ sauce (use whatever you like here), a few pads of butter, more of that sweet BBQ rub, and a little bit of brown sugar. Mix it all together and throw it back on the pit. It’s important to note here that you don’t want your belly bites to be swimming in BBQ sauce. They can’t swim and you don’t have time for floaties. You only want to use enough to coat your bites.
The time on the pit during this step can vary a bit. Basically what you’re looking for is that the sauce has caramelized and has become nice and sticky. Pretty much candied bacon bites is what your goal is here. Once you’ve reached that point, pull them off and rest them.
The payoff:
If you followed the above steps, you should be left with some delicious, sticky, tender, smoky little pieces of candied pig heaven. Serve these things up anyway you want. Throw ‘em on a bun, toss ‘em in a tortilla, or just straight up put ‘em in your mouth. There is no wrong way to eat these things. They’re great for parties, cookouts, or any kind of get together (just have some wet wipes handy). I guarantee everyone will love these. If they don’t, let’s be real, they shouldn’t be invited to your BBQ anyway.
Thanks for checking out the post. Leave a comment below if you try these, and let me know how they turn out! Happy Tuesday!
