Crispy Pork Belly Banh Mi Bowl

Ingredients

• 300 g pork belly slices
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 x 250g pouch microwave jasmine rice
• 2 tbsp rice vinegar
• 1 carrot, grated
• 0.5 cucumber, sliced into half-moons
• 1 red chilli, sliced
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp fish sauce
• 1 tbsp honey
• 1 tsp caster sugar
• 3 tbsp mayonnaise
• 1 tsp sriracha
• 15g coriander, leaves picked
• 1 lime, cut into wedges
• Vietnamese-style baguette or crusty white baguette, to serve
• shop-bought pickled daikon (do chua), to serve

Method

1. Start the pickle first so it has time to work: toss the grated carrot with 1 tbsp of the rice vinegar, the caster sugar and a generous pinch of salt. Leave it to soften and sharpen while you crack on.
2. Whisk the soy sauce, fish sauce, honey and minced garlic in a bowl. Add the pork belly slices and turn to coat in the sticky marinade — the sugar in the honey is what gives you the lacquer later.
3. Heat a large stainless or cast-iron frying pan over high heat — no oil, the belly renders its own. Season the pork with a pinch of pepper (hold back on salt, the soy and fish sauce carry plenty), then lay the slices in a single layer. Don't crowd the pan — work in two batches if you need to. Crowded pork steams instead of crisping, and you came here for crackling edges.
4. Cook for 5–6 minutes per side until deeply lacquered and properly charred in spots. The garlic in the marinade catches fast on this heat — if you see it darkening past pale gold and smelling acrid rather than fragrant, pull the pan off for ten seconds. Burnt garlic turns the whole bowl bitter.
5. Lift the pork onto a board to rest. Splash a tablespoon of water into the hot pan and swirl for 20 seconds, scraping up the sticky brown bits — that's your glaze. Spoon it back over the pork so it pools rather than dries on.
6. While the pork rests, stir the sriracha through the mayonnaise until streaked pink and glossy. Toss the cucumber half-moons through the remaining 1 tbsp rice vinegar with a pinch of salt.
7. Ping the rice per packet instructions and fluff with a fork. Taste the cucumber and the carrot — adjust salt now, not at the table.
8. Slice the pork into thick, glossy strips. Build the bowls: rice base, a tangle of pickled carrot, the vinegared cucumber, the crispy pork piled on top, a zigzag of sriracha mayo, the pickled daikon alongside, a flurry of coriander leaves and sliced red chilli, and a wedge of lime to squeeze over at the table — that final squeeze of lime juice cuts through the rich pork and ties it all together.