These Sous Vide Pork Belly Bites are totally irresistible! They cook low and slow for 12 hours, then get crisped up on the grill for an easy BBQ appetizer! You NEED these at your next party.

Photography Credit: Nick Evans

This post is brought to you in partnership with Joule: Sous Vide by ChefSteps.

Cooking pork belly is something that can seem intimidating for the average home cook. It’s a very fatty piece of meat, and if you don’t cook it correctly it can end up with a texture that can be everything from chewy to almost gooey.

The traditional way to cook pork belly is to roast it for a long time to render out most of the fat and crisp up the skin, but I prefer cooking my pork belly sous vide to guarantee that it’s cooked exactly the way I want it.

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SOUS VIDE, THEN GRILL!

To make the belly a little easier to share and to capitalize on grilling season right now, I like to slice up the belly into thick planks, skewer them with a simple BBQ glaze, and grill them until they are crispy around the edges!

This is a great appetizer to make when you want something simple and easy since most of the cooking can happen while you are asleep – yes, I cook these overnight!

PORK BELLY COOKING TEMPERATURE

Pork belly can be cooked sous vide at a range of cooking temperatures. If you want a more firm, steak-like texture to the pork belly, cook it at 158°F.

Personally, I like to I cook mine a little higher at 170°F, which renders out a bit more of the fat and gives you very tender, melt-in-your-mouth bites. There’s no hard and fast rule here, though!

TRIMMING AND SLICING THE BELLY

Even after cooking, the pork belly will still have a lot of fat on it. Chill the pork belly fully (which makes it easier to slice), and then trim off any overhanging bits of fat and any parts where the belly is very thin. You want a rough rectangle of evenly thick pork belly.

You can use any leftover bits of cooked belly in your next batch of pasta carbonara or crisp them in a pan to serve with a salad!

One other note on trimming, which relates to the rind (or skin) on the pork belly. I always leave this on my pork belly. It helps hold the bites together and also gets crispy during grilling! It’s like a little chicharrón on top of your pork belly bite. Yum!

That said, if you don’t like the texture of the rind, you can trim it off, but just know that will make your bites very fragile and they might fall apart on the grill.

I found the right size for a good pork belly bite is about 1/2 inch thick and 1 1/2 inches long. That’s a big enough piece that it won’t just fall apart on the grill, but not so big that it becomes more than a bite.

GRILLING THE PORK BELLY

These pork belly bites can take a lot of heat, but you don’t want to cook them for too long on the grill or they tend to fall apart.

On a gas grill cranked up to high heat, they will only need about 2 to 3 minutes per side to develop a good sear. If you are using charcoal, 1 to 2 minutes per side over direct heat will do the trick.

Remember that the pork belly is perfectly cooked already! We are just reheating it, adding the glaze, and crisping it up!

When the bites come off the grill, sprinkle them with some sesame seeds and pass them out to friends while warm!

Have questions about sous vide cooking? Leave a comment below!

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