Recently the lunch crew at work have been visiting Kushi Box at least once a week. They serve some great teriyaki chicken over rice, especially with the spicy miso. One of my favourite things there though is their “P-Toro”, which is pork belly (or jowl depending on who you believe). All of their meat is barbecued there in the store on their grill and tastes great, but the p-toro is out of this world… crunchy, chewy, salty and amazingly delicious.
So when my friend Justin (why are like half my friends called Justin?) mentioned that he’d found some pork belly at a Korean supermarket just a couple of miles from where we live, I had to try grilling it myself. Along with that I decided to do some teriyaki chicken, and Louise made some rice to get the whole experience.
First, I marinated the chicken for an hour or so. This is my marinade:
Juice of one lime
1/2 cup cider vinegar
1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 tsp red pepper flakes
2 tsp sugar
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
I cut the chicken breasts in half through the center, like butterflying them but cutting all the way, to reduce the thickness and therefore cooking time. Put the chicken and marinade in a freezer bag and put in the fridge for a while, turning halfway through the marinating time. It’s best to marinade the chicken for at least a couple of hours.
The pork belly I had was thin-sliced, maybe 1/5 inch thick with no skin on. To prepare just cover both sides with salt and pepper. I tried cooking them two ways – low (around 300 degrees) for around 20 minutes, turning every 4 minutes; and on a medium heat, around 400 degrees for about 8-9 minutes. I overcooked some of the first batch but otherwise couldn’t really tell a difference between the two.
The chicken I put on the grill for 4 minutes per side at 400 degrees, then basted with teriyaki sauce and cooked for a minute extra on each side. Once you add in the time they sat waiting for me to turn everything at once, I think it was probably 12 minutes total and they were a little overdone, a bit dry, so I’ll try them for a minute or two less next time.
And how was it all? Well, the pork was amazing, just as good as Kushi Box, and the chicken would have been as good had I not grilled it for too long. I’ll call it a success!