Pigs In A Blanket, BBQ Grail Asian Style

A couple times a month on The BBQ Brethren Forum hosts a “Throwdown”.  Each of the throwdowns have a particular theme.  The theme for the current Throwdown is “A Surprise Inside.”  I don’t enter very many of them but because this theme was picked by Rob over at In To The Flames, I had to give it a try.

I wanted to take the traditional Pigs In A Blanket and ramp it up a couple notches.

Here’s my entry:

Zhu Bei Zi Zai (Pigs In A Blanket)

I started with a nice hunk of pork belly.  I love pork belly and thought it would make the perfect “pig” to stuff in the blanked.  The pork belly was rubbed with a mixture of kosher salt, pepper and Chinese Five Spice Powder.  I smoked the pork belly for 6 hours on the Traeger.

One of the great things about pork belly is that it has a great deal of fat flavor.  Here it about 3 hours in and the fat has started to really render out nicely.

Not only did I want to change up Pigs In A Blanket I wanted to give it a Pig Candy treatment.  So I coated the whole top of the pork belly with a nice layer of brown sugar.  This caramelized perfectly and gave the pork a nice little crunch.

The pork belly was glazed with a Hoisin BBQ Glaze.

Hoisin Glaze

• 1/2 cup Ketchup
• 1/4 cup Seasoned Rice Vinegar
• 1 tbls Soy Sauce
• 1 tbles Fish Sauce
• 2 tbls Hoisin Sauce

Mix all the ingredients together in a small bowl.  Brush on the pork belly every 20 minutes for the final hour of smoking.

After allowing the pork belly rested for 20 minutes I cut the pork belly into “egg roll” size pieces.  Each piece of pork belly was wrapped in egg roll wrapper and fried.

They came out so good.  The brown sugar and Hoisin Glaze worked fantastic.  Served with a little Thai Sweet CHili Sauce and some Chinese Salad gave us a great Saturday night dinner.