Pork belly sous-vide with strong port wine sauce

➊ Season the pork belly with salt and pepper and add a little rosemary. Then place it in a vacuum bag suitable for sous-vide and vacuum seal it. Once packed like this, the pork belly goes into the fridge for 2 days so that the spices can absorb optimally.

➋ Then preheat the sous-vide device to 65 °C and place the vacuum-packed pork belly in a water bath for 24 hours. Take the meat out of the bag and carefully cut into the crust with a sharp knife. Be careful not to cut deeper into the meat than stay in the fat under the rind. This would cause the belly to spread too much when grilling and would no longer be as visually appealing. Rub in the coarse sea salt and smoke in a ceramic or kettle grill for 3-4 hours at 120 °C, for example, until the rind is nice and crispy. It is important that the grill stays at 120 °C the whole time.

➌ For the port wine sauce, dice the garlic and onions, melt the butter in a saucepan or small pan, add the sugar and caramelize until light. Then sauté the onion and garlic pieces in it. Add the tomato paste and flour and deglaze with red wine and port wine. Pour in the beef stock and add the bay leaves, juniper berries, salt, pepper and the rosemary sprig. Reduce until the sauce has thickened. Pass the sauce through a sieve and thicken with cold pieces of butter.

➍ Remove the grilled pork belly from the grill and cut into attractive cubes. Serve with the port wine sauce.