Pork Belly question

[smokininidaho]

Doing my first pork belly. Do you do fat side up or down? Oh yeah, it's snowing!

 

[S-met]

Fat up! Fat renders and bastes your meat. Just like a brisket.

 

[smokininidaho]

I'm seriously thinking of fat side down on this. Don't know how much I believe in the fat basting the meat on this cut.

 

[S-met]

Well, believe what you want. I do not have scientific evidence to support my claims.

However, anecdotally from personal experience, fats start to liquefy around 140 and collagens starts to liquefy somewhere around 160+ degrees. Fat cap down and it hits the grates below. Fat cap up, it takes a longer path down the meat to get there.

https://www.scienceofcooking.com/meat/slow_cooking1.htm

Choice is yours, I only offer my opinion.

 

[smokininidaho]

Thanks S-met, well it's on fat side down. Always do my pork shoulders and briskets fat cap up for the past 30 years. They had some pork bellies at my local market yesterday. Had never tried one in all these years so we'll see how it comes out. I'm thinking about going back and getting a few more and freezing them as they rarely have them unless you special order. Thinking I paid like $4.30 per lb. but the fat cap was already trimmed to about 1/4".

 

[smokininidaho]

3 hours in now. Have some beef ribs going also. Coming along nicely and still some snow flurries.

 

[S-met]

I love pork belly. It's essentially uncured bacon. Used to get slabs for 1.25/lb before it was trendy. I miss those days...

 

[smokininidaho]

I remember when brisket was $1.25 lb.