Do you have a good cardiologist? Can he write you a note saying it is OK to eat what may be the fattiest, sweetest piece of meat you have ever eaten? Good, continue reading to learn how to make pork belly burnt ends.
First off, I know real burnt ends are from the brisket point and are a quintessential Kansas City BBQ staple. If you feel better calling these fatty sweet meat candy instead of burnt ends go ahead, you won’t hurt my feelings. But for the sake of this post I will be calling these pork belly burnt ends since they follow the process for brisket burnt ends pretty closely. And if anyone complains just feed them one of these and they will be quiet. With the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl these will make a great Super Bowl snack too.
Pork belly burnt ends are usually smoked with a sweeter rub and then covered in a sweet sauce. The result is some bite-sized chunks of sweet, sticky, fatty bits of pork that might be the best thing you have ever eaten.
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All in all the process to make pork belly burnt ends is pretty simple:
How to make Pork Belly Burnt Ends
- Cube and season the pork belly
- Smoke the pork belly
- Braise the pork belly
- Glaze the pork belly
Now let’s expand on those 4 steps:
Cube and Season the Pork Belly
I get my pork belly at Costco. They are usually right around 10 pounds each and run $2.99 a pound. If you don’t have a Costco nearby check out a food service store (Smart Foodservice is the name of one close to me) and most likely they will have them. Another place to look will be at Asian markets since pork belly is pretty popular in Asian cuisine.
To take these to the next level you can always go for a heritage breed pork belly like the Kurobuta Pork Belly from Snake River Farms. Heritage breeds like Kurobuta (another name for Berkshire) will have a bit darker color and overall richer flavor than standard commodity pork.
If your belly has skin on it you will want to take the skin off but all the bellies I have ever purchased have been skinned already.
Cut your pork belly into strips about 1 inch thick and then cut again into 1 inch cubes. Some recipes go 1 1/2 – 2 inches but I wanted some smaller, bite sized pieces. Dump them all in a big bowl, sprinkle in some rub, toss them around, sprinkle in some more rub, toss, and repeat until you have a nice coating of seasoning on each side of the pork belly cubes.
I wanted my pork belly burnt ends to be really sweet so I went with Meat Church Honey Hog rub. Barker BBQ also makes a sweet rub with a little more kick to it than Honey Hog if you want a bit more spice.
Put your seasoned pork belly cubes on a cooking rack which will make transporting them to the smoker and removing them from the smoker much, much easier. Pick up a couple extra racks so you don’t get yelled at for taking the “good racks” from the kitchen. Trust me, I know from experience. You can put the pieces of pork belly directly on the smoker grates but the cooking racks make it much, much easier. 5 pounds of belly will fit on one rack so if you are doing the whole 10 pounds like I did you will need two racks.
Smoke the Pork Belly Burnt Ends
For these pork belly burnt ends you will want your smoker running around 250 degrees. Anywhere from 225-275 will be OK but don’t go much hotter than that. I smoked mine on my Weber Ranch Kettle since both racks of pork belly would easily fit. Any type of smoker will work for this so use what you got.
I tend to use apple wood for most pork products and that is what I used here. Cherry will work, hickory will work, pecan will work… pretty much any smoking wood will be fine for these. I would probably avoid mesquite though.
You want to smoke these for about 2-3 hours. Don’t worry too much about the internal temperature of the pork at this point. What you want to look or is a decent bark to form on the cubes and for them to take on some good color and start to get tender. In the next step they will get super tender so they don’t need to be melt in your mouth tender at this point. If you are at the texture of a good cooked ham you are probably on the right track.
Braise the Pork Belly Burnt Ends
Now we really start to get these pork belly burnt ends sweet and tender. Remove the racks from the smoker and put the pork chunks in a foil pan. 5 pounds of belly will fit into one pan but for 10 pounds use two pans. Sprinkle over some brown sugar (about a half cup per pan), cut a stick of butter per pan into tablespoon chunks and add those to the pan. The final step will be drizzling some honey over the top of it all. Cover the pan tightly with foil and put it back on the smoker for another 90 minutes or so.
You want the pork belly to hit around 200-205 degrees. For small bites like this I like to measure the temps with my Thermopop thermometer. The Thermopop can measure temps at the very tip of the thermometer so for a small piece of meat like this or other really thin cuts you don’t need to stick the probe in more than 1/2 inch or so. Cheaper thermometers won’t work for taking temps like this.
Eat a piece and see how tender it is. Can you easily chew it? Does it melt in your mouth? It is ready for the next step. Is it still a bit tough and chewy? Give it another few minutes.
Glaze the Pork Belly Burnt Ends
Remove the foil from the top of the pans. At this point you can take them out of the braising liquid and put them in new pans or if you are really careful just pour out some of the excess liquid. If I tried that I would either dump the liquid all over myself somehow or the burnt ends would end up in the sink. So I like to use new pans. You can buy them in bulk on Amazon for about $0.60 each which is much cheaper than the grocery store.
Now it is time to think about a glazing liquid. Again, think sweet instead of spicy. Any sweet barbecue sauce will work for this. I had some Wright BBQ Peach Chipotle sauce in my fridge so I used that. I also had a some homemade peach jam in the fridge so I heated up a cup of the bbq sauce with a cup of the peach jam to use as my glaze.
Blues Hog Original or their Raspberry Chipotle sauce would be a good choice as well and you could cut their raspberry sauce with some raspberry jam as well.
Basically you want a pretty sweet sauce. You can use all bbq sauce or cut it with jam. I like the extra sweetness of the jam but the choice is yours.
Drizzle some of the sauce on the pork belly burnt ends and toss them around a bit to coat. Return them to the smoker uncovered in the foil pans for another 10-15 minutes to set the sauce. You can also just do this step in the oven and nobody would ever know the difference.
Time to Eat
What you should now have are some very sweet, very tender bits of meat candy to enjoy. I don’t know how many of these I ate but I ate a LOT of them. Once you start eating you won’t be able to stop. These aren’t something you will want to eat all the time but they are an excellent party food, great appetizer, and would be perfect for a Super Bowl party. My family always just does snacks on Christmas Day instead of a big meal so these were great for that.
When I start looking at how to cook something like pork belly burnt ends I like to look at a few different recipes and techniques, take bits and pieces from them, and come up with my own plan. Here are 4 places to look for inspiration for yourself:
Pork Belly Burn Ends from Malcom Reed – I love Malcom Reed’s videos. He keeps things simple and does a great job breaking down each step.
Smoked Pork Belly Burnt Ends from Vindulge – Vindulge takes normal recipes and “gourmets” them up a bit with ingredients like their Pinot Noir bbq sauce and they give wine pairings for a lot of their recipes. And I love how they are promoting “Northwest barbecue”.
Jess Pryles Smoked BBQ Burnt Ends – Jess does a great job educating her readers about the world of meat and her recipies are almost always great.
Meat Church Pork Belly Burnt Ends – Since I was using some Meat Church rub I wanted to see how they did pork belly burnt ends.
When you are trying something new or want to learn a new skill like how to make pork belly burnt ends don’t just look for one recipe or technique. There is no right way to do it. Find a few general sources you trust and enjoy and take bits and pieces from them all and figure out what works for you and what tastes good to you.
And definitely make these pork belly burnt ends. You might get a heart attack and diabetes all at the same time but at least you will die happy.
