Pork Belly Burnt Ends

For my money, the best single "bite" out of a whole cow, is a properly cooked, spiced, and cubed "Burnt End" from the Point of a properly smoked brisket!  WOW, is that good stuff, or what?  Well, God, in his infinite wisdom, also gave us the pig!  Pigs are packed with a variety of tender and delicious bits, and their rotund little bellies are the best, hands down.  What if you could make Burnt Ends from a pig?!  Would they be as good??

There is no more flavorful, juicy, or soft and tender portion of meat than pork belly.  Humans have savored pork belly for years.  Prior to refrigeration, we knocked ourselves out trying to preserve such a valuable morsel.  We finally settled on a process of salt curing and cold smoking the belly and "bacon" was born.  I submit to you that today, 100 years later, we have refrigerators and freezers and while bacon has its place in the world, there are other ways to prepare pork belly!  Some of them might even be MORE delicious than bacon!  There, I said it....

You will need:

• 1 Whole, 10lb untrimmed SKINLESS pork belly
• Chunks of Apple Wood / Charcoal
• Pork Rub
• Sharp filet-knife
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1.5 sticks of butter
• 1/2 cup honey
• 1/2 cup bbq sauce
• 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar

Lay your pork belly out on your board and have a look.  What you want is a nicely squared hunk of belly, that is trimmed to a uniform thickness.  Use your knife and square off the edges, and "shave" down the thicker end of the belly if needed.  The end-goal here will be to cut this marvelous piece of meat into cubes that are roughly 1.5 inches on each side.

Cut 1.5 inch strips, and then cut 1.5 inch squares out of each strip.  During the cook, most of this fat will render out and the squares will shrink down to about an inch square, so cut them bigger than "bite size" now.  If you're entertaining ideas of salt-curing this belly and cutting your bacon into cubes, rather than strips, you're not alone!  We'll save that idea for next time, but for now, collect all of your belly-cubes into a bowl and spice them up with your pork rub.

Make sure all six sides of each cube get a nice dusting of your spice rub.  You may have to work in batches, moving the pig from your board, to the bowl, to the rack.  Why the rack?  Well, you could put the cubes right into your BBQ pit, but then you'd run into trouble when you tried to take them off, one by one or whatever.  Besides, they get sticky so... it's so much easier to spray a rack or two with non-stick spray, and then lay out your cubes with enough space between them for the smoke to work it's magic!  You want the fat to render AWAY from the cubes, and a nice dark crispy bark to form, so resist the temptation to put them into a foil pan!

Get your pit cooking with a mix of charcoal and apple wood.  Bring it up to 250 degrees before placing the racks into your pit.  You're only going to leave them in there for 3.5 hours so be sure to preheat first; DON'T BE LAZY!  Close the lid and leave them alone in there for 3.5 hours.

When 3.5 hours is up, your burnt-ends will have taken on a nice dark bark from the smoke and they'll be ready for you to tenderize!  Stack them all, loosely, into a half-sized foil pan.

Sprinkle the sugar and butter over the top of them, and pour over the honey.  Don't give me any of that, "Ken, wait... are you SURE you need to add MORE fat," crap, either!  I'm well aware of the fat content of pork belly and while we rendered a lot of it out, yes, there's still quite a bit there.  BUT... we need a braising liquid to tenderize these beauties and butter and brown sugar go so well together, not to mention the honey.  Don't fool yourself, we aren't baking these as a delightful fat-free snack to reward ourselves for doing some yoga this morning... Think of this as "fuel" for chopping a few cords of wood later, for your family's survival in the Yukon.  ...or to fuel your BBQ Pit.

Cover this goodness, tightly, with a couple layers of foil, and put it right back onto the pit (250 degrees) for an hour.  Close the lid... Walk away...

After an hour you will, flat out, be tempted to just start eating these like so much popcorn, despite the fact that they're "Napalm Hot!"  Hang on... don't burn your face off (yet), take them out of the foil pan and place them onto a serving platter.  Drizzle a mix of your favorite BBQ sauce and apple cider vinegar over the top of them, and toss to coat!

Now, pick one up (I had to use a fork, at first, because they were still too hot) and take a bite!  Hot Damn, Tamale, baby!  A small pocket of liquid bacon fat exploded when I bit down and effectively basted this bite with what could only be described as the tears from a deliriously happy Cherub who had just hit the lotto in Heaven somewhere.  The meat was as soft as ice-cream and it was every bit as good as I'd hoped it would be!  These are extremely rich and decadent, I don't recommend eating more than 3 or 4 of them.  At a time.  And WOW, are they ever great with a cold beer..............