Grilled Pork belly "Kakuni" 豚の角煮焼き

Whenever we go to our near-by gourmet grocery store, I cannot resist buying a block of pork belly. The last time was not an exception and I made the usual  "kakuni" 豚の角煮. We restricted the servings to one small piece at a time.  I decided to vary how I served it.

Recently, I found out that there were two cookbooks on Izakaya cuisine in English and bought them. One is called “Izakaya Japanese barfood” and the other is called ”Izakaya Hawaii, Tokkuritei cooking”.  I am planning to post them on the Izakaya cookbook section of this blog soon ("soon" could mean in several months). Flipping over the pages of these cookbooks, I saw a crispy grilled pork belly dish in which the meat was first braised in liquid and then grilled. Since I already had "kakuni" made up, I decided to grill it.

After I warmed up the kauni in the broth I grilled it in the toaster oven (on broil). For the sake of convenience, I skewered one piece of pork belly with two bamboo skewers so that I could easily turn over to cook the other side. I covered the pre-soaked bamboo skewers and also the exposed parts of the skewers with pieces of aluminum foil. Upon reflection I could have just grilled the meat and put the skewers on later. Oh, well.

In any case, this method adds a crunchy crust to this fatty pork. This is definitely worthwhile variation of pork belly "kakuni".