Recipe :: Pork & Potato Twists
Mollie loves these Japanese treats bought by her godma, and they are:
a) Impossible to get here
b) Super expensive
so I got around to making my own copy cat version of it.
The Japanese treat was basically a piece of meat wrapped around a processed sweet potato stick, dried out to form a tough jerky. I have slices of pork belly and sweet potatoes chilling around in my pantry, so yay(!) let's try a new recipe! Also, am super stoked I can finally get around to finishing up the pork belly; it has been around for a bit long.
Ingredients:
500g pork belly slices
2 or 3 large sweet potatoes
Directions:
1) Cut up sweet potatoes into fries.
(Mine were about 1cm to 1.5cm in width)
2) Prepare sliced pork belly. Mine were sliced by the butcher.
3) Wrap each fry with a slice of pork belly. Trim the length of pork belly as required.
4) Bake at low heat (I used 100 - 130 degrees Celcius for about two hours, till sweet potatoes are tender and pork is brown. I baked on grilled trays so as to drip off excess fat.
If I may say so myself, these turned out really delicious and decadent. The pork belly gave these treats a very rich and creamy texture. The aroma wafting from the kitchen made me excited to try these myself! I was pretty pleased at how they turned out. Mollie was obviously more than pretty pleased!
Due to the high fat content, (53g of fat for every 100 grams of pork belly), these turned out super oily, that's for sure! Tips to remove excess fat:
- bake these on a grilled tray with another solid tray below to catch drippings of excess fat.
- after baking, sandwich these on thick paper towels and apply firm pressure, to soak up excess fat.
Also, they will not keep in the refrigerator as long as other baked treats (fat turns rancid quickly), so I freezed these up.
Because of their high value, I am using these treats for recall training. I cut them up into small 1 inch pieces, and reward Mollie with one after each successful recall. I definitely will not be giving these treats out easily and freely due to their high fat content. In fact I will not be making these too often as well, however big of a hit they are!
