These tacos are a mashup of my favourites and combine the inspiration from two great chefs, David Chang and Roy Choi. we’ve been lucky enough in our travels to eat at both chefs restaurants and i guess this is kind of a homage. We had a version of these tacos on a menu at the cafe we used to own, they were always a crowd favourite, I’ve made hundreds of these tacos, and cooked a lot of pork belly as well, if you ever need a go to pork belly recipe -this is it.

These tacos feature in a video i made about the making of the Taco cleaver. The knife is made from 1084 carbon steel with a black linen micarta handle, it’s been etched in ferric chloride and features a faint hamon ( not where i wanted it though, as i dropped the knife out of heat treatment into the oil faster than i wanted ). It’s a more modern and minimal style of cleaver, i’m torn between making knives like this versus making more antique looking knives that seem to be popular with my customers.

You can watch the video here.

Here’s how to do it.

Pork belly. Takes about 48 hours, you’ll want to do this a few days in advance,

First you want pork belly, around a kilo will do. I used Bangalow pork, it’s hormone and antibiotic free and farmed using sustainable practices - you can use whatever pork you like, but I just like to know where the produce comes from and how it's farmed.

You then need.

Salt flakes, black pepper, brown sugar and white sugar, cling wrap, foil and a baking tray.

Remove the skin from the pork - controversial but necessary, then in a bowl mix up a cup of each sugar and about half a cup of salt flakes and about ¼ cup of black pepper.

You basically just need to coat the entire pork belly with the mixture, once it’s been coated with the salt , pepper and sugar wrap the pork belly in cling wrap and refrigerate for 24 hours. Make sure you put it in a container or bowl as a lot of pork juice is going to come out of it.

The next day when you are ready to cook the pork belly, preheat your oven to about 230 - 240 degrees.

Unwrap the pork and pat dry with a paper towel, place into a baking tray ( pro tip - line the bottom of the baking tray with greaseproof paper.)

You need to cook the pork for a total of about 2-3 hours, on high heat at first then at low heat for the remainder. So place the pork in the oven for 20 - 30 min at 230 degrees uncovered. Check it at 15 min and just keep an eye on it for the next 10 minutes or so. Before the outside gets too burnt from the sugar , take out the pork , turn the oven down to 120 degrees and cover the pork in foil, put the covered pork back in the oven for 2- 3 hours - the aim is to render a lot of the fat out and almost have pull apart pork. Once you're satisfied that the pork is ready, - take it out of the oven and let it rest for half an hour on a bench to let it steam off.

Next you want to wrap the pork in cling wrap again and place in the fridge to get cold. When you're ready to make tacos, take out the pork from the fridge and slice it into strips - about 1 cm thick and 10 cm long.

To make the Pico de gallo ( salsa ) you’ll need

2 tomatoes

1 red onion

Half a cup of pickled jalapenos

A bunch of coriander

1 lime

Salt and pepper

Avocado ( not necessary but i like it )

Two ways you can do this, - finely chop the first 3 ingredients plus the avo and combine with roughly chopped coriander salt, pepper and the juice from the lime.

Or throw it all in a blender and pulse chop it - you don't want soup just chopped.

You’ll also need to make two sauces - one is a gochujang based thick spicy sauce and the other is a mayo based smokey sauce.

The gochujang sauce is based on Roy Choi’s kogi sauce - just mix the following in a small bowl,

½ cup gochujang, 3 tablespoons soy sauce, 3 tablespoons sugar ( yikes), 1 teaspoon rice wine vinegar, 2 teaspoons sesame oil.

For the next sauce - don't worry about making mayo - i use kewpie mayo, then you want to find some chipotle sauce, one brand i like is “la costena” from the supermarket. You can make your own chipotle sauce, but it takes a while and we haven't got all day. Just mix about half a cup of mayo with ¼ cup of chipotle sauce.

Next, pickle some cucumber and chilli.

Finely slice a cucumber and 1 red chilli and place in a bowl with ¼ cup of sugar, then you need about 2 cups of boiling water to which you add ¼ cup of vinegar. Add the water and vinegar to the bowl of cucumber, chilli and sugar, finish with a dash of salt. Let it sit for around 5 minutes then drain off the liquid.

You're just about ready to eat delicious tacos.

The tortillas are a personal preference, I use corn tortillas from la tortilleria in melbourne, you can make your own - i’ve never done it, but probably should. Or there's a few other brands out there, i don't rate the flour tortillas that you get at the supermarket, and i’m not sure if it's worth mentioning that the hard shell tacos in a box are not what you want - ( unless that's what you want, then whatever i’m no taco snob. )

You want to start with heating up your tortillas - fry pan or flat top on bbq works great, corn tortillas can be dry, so brush with some olive oil while warming them up, once you have them soft and floppy, take off the heat and wrap in tea towel or one of those tortilla bowls if your fancy.

Next up is the pork, get your frying pan or flat top hot enough to sear the pork, use some olive oil to stop the pork from sticking and sear both sides of the pork belly strips.

While still on the heat, drizzle the “kogi” sauce over the pork, it will burn pretty quick so have your tortillas ready.

Place as much pork as you want on each tortilla then follow it with a spoon of pico de gallo, a couple of pieces of cucumber and chilli and then top with the chipotle mayo.

That’s it right there, you should be eating delicious tacos all night.

Pork Belly tacos

proper blt