Pork Belly (Podcherevok) Boiled in Onion Skins
Hearty, delicious, and fuss-free — a great replacement for unhealthy sausage! It turns out to be a wonderful thing — for breakfast, for the road, or as a snack to take to work; it's a hit everywhere! The beautiful golden color makes the dish especially appetizing! Podcherevok (puzanina) is a cut of pork belly. It's usually made into rolls, salted, or smoked — turning it into products that are an excellent alternative to store-bought sausages. They're preferable for their wholesomeness — and it's no accident, as V. V. Pokhlebkin writes, that recipes using whole foods in a single piece were common in old Rus (even fillings were made mostly from whole foods — berries, apples, mushrooms — choosing the small ones). Thicker pork belly is cooked in chunks; a thin piece can be loosely rolled up like a roll. To do this, take a kilogram of the thin edge of the belly and trim off the ribs, if there are any. Belly usually has frequent layers of meat — the more of these layers, the leaner the final product will be.
- Make the onion broth: pour 1 liter of water into a pot and add the salt, onion skins, bay leaf, and peppercorns. Bring it to a boil. 2. Rinse the pork belly, be sure to pat it dry, rub it with salt (1 tablespoon) and ground pepper, stud it with garlic cloves, then roll it up and tie it with thread or twine. 3. Lower it into the onion broth, bring it to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer over low heat for an hour to an hour and a half. Leave it to cool in the liquid. 4. When the roll is warm, take it out and put it under a weight until it cools completely — you can set it in a cool place, on the balcony, for example. 5. Once fully cooled, the roll can be rubbed with crushed garlic (optional, if you like fresh garlic and it suits you), wrapped in parchment, and kept in the refrigerator for as long as it lasts!
Caloric content of the products possible in the composition of the dish
- Garlic - 143 kcal/100g
- Bay leaf - 313 kcal/100g
- Ground black pepper - 255 kcal/100g
- Black peppercorns - 255 kcal/100g
- Salt - 0 kcal/100g
- Water - 0 kcal/100g
- Onion skins - 0 kcal/100g
- Pork belly - 630 kcal/100g
