Cured Pork Belly With Lentils


Cured Pork Belly With Lentils
Pork belly with lentils is a typical French bistro dish. In principal, it is a mixture of different cuts of pork, usually salt-cured, cooked slowly until "confit" and meltingly tender, served with lentils cooked in stock.

This dish takes a good while to prepare, but it's a real treat! It reheats very well, tasting better each time, so do make plenty in one go.
113 K 4.0/5 (43 reviews)
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Last modified on: November 15th 2015
For 10 people, you will need:

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Times for this recipe
Preparation: 20 min.
Cooking: 3 hours
All in all: 3 hours 20 min.
When should you start or finish this recipe?
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Step by step recipe


Stage 1 - 5 min.
Cured Pork Belly With Lentils : Stage 1
Prepare the flavourings for the stock:

chop 1 onion, peel 2 carrots and slice into rounds, lightly crush 1 garlic clove.

Stage 2 - 5 min.
Cured Pork Belly With Lentils : Stage 2
For the meat, choose fully cured or lightly salted cuts of pork. The ones you see here are: 500 g belly (streaky) bacon, 1 kg 500 g pork shoulder, 1 Morteau sausage, 1 kg 500 g knuckle of pork.

Lightly salted meat only needs to be rinsed. More heavily salted meat should be soaked for 2 hours in cold water, with the water changed twice during that time.

The sausage can be used as it is.

Stage 3 - 2 min.
Cured Pork Belly With Lentils : Stage 3
Put into a large cooking pot: all the meat, onion, carrots, garlic, bouquet garni and a little salt and pepper. Cover with cold water.

Stage 4 - 2 hours
Cured Pork Belly With Lentils : Stage 4
Bring to the boil on high heat, skim off the froth that forms, then leave to cook gently for 2 to 3 hours.

Stage 5
Cured Pork Belly With Lentils : Stage 5
After this, when you take the meat out, you will see that it has become a melt-in-the-mouth "confit".

Stage 6 - 5 min.
Cured Pork Belly With Lentils : Stage 6
Trim the meat, removing and discarding any bones, skin and rind.

Cut the sausage into thick slices.

Stage 7 - 2 min.
Cured Pork Belly With Lentils : Stage 7
Rinse 500 g green lentils under cold running water in a strainer.

Stage 8 - 5 min.
Cured Pork Belly With Lentils : Stage 8
Take out a good mugful of the meat stock and save for later. Discard the bouquet garni and the garlic, rescue the carrots and set them to one side, then bring the stock back to the boil.

Stage 9 - 20 min.
Cured Pork Belly With Lentils : Stage 9
Tip in the lentils and leave to cook until they are just tender, but still fairly firm (they will finish cooking later with the meat).

Drain the lentils, but save the stock they were cooked in.

Stage 10 - 5 min.
Cured Pork Belly With Lentils : Stage 10
In the big cooking pot, melt 3 tablespoons lard on high heat.

Fry the meat for 2 or 3 minutes until browned all over.

Pour in 2 glasses dry white wine and deglaze the bottom of the pan.

Stage 11 - 30 min.
Cured Pork Belly With Lentils : Stage 11
Add the lentils, the mugful of stock you saved earlier, and the carrots, then mix.

Cover and leave to simmer gently for about 30 minutes (or longer), but take care not to let the pork belly dry out or stick. If necessary, moisten with a ladleful or more of stock.

Stage 12
Cured Pork Belly With Lentils : Stage 12
Serve piping hot.
Remarks
If you don't have any Morteau sausage, use any other sausage you like.

There are some, me among them, who like to serve pork belly with a trickle of vinegar.

As I say above, the pork is is even better when reheated but, unfortunately, the lentils turn mushy when overcooked and become less and less presentable.

Keep the remaining stock, with it you can make a tasty 'day after pork belly' soup.
And to drink?
A red wine from Burdondy for example, possibly a Ladoix "Sur les vris" from Christian Perrin, it is just perfect.
Keeping: Several days in the fridge, covered with plastic film.
Source: Home made.
Nutritional information
Proteins (gr)Carbohydrates (gr)Fats (gr)Energy value (in k-calories)Energy value (in k-joules)
Whole recipe740 RDI=280 %270 RDI=30 %1,140 RDI=170 %14,290 RDI=720 %59,830 RDI: 720 %
Per 100 g10 RDI=6 %5 RDI=0 %20 RDI=3 %280 RDI=10 %1,170 RDI: 10 %
Per person70 RDI=30 %30 RDI=3 %110 RDI=20 %1,430 RDI=70 %5,980 RDI: 70 %
The % figures are calculated in relation to the Recommended Dietary Intake , or RDI of 2,000 k-calories (or 8,400 k-joules) per day for a woman Change to a man
Possible allergens in this recipe: Celery, Sulfites
How much will it cost?
  • For 10 people : 29.60 €
  • Per person : 3.00 €

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Note: Be careful, these prices are only an estimate, you can consult the table of prices by ingredients used for this estimate.
This recipe uses (among others)
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