Slow Cooker Braised Pork Belly

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Updated: April 2025

As the weather changes and its getting colder, it’s time to bring out the slow cooker to make some comforting food. This Slow Cooker Braised Pork Belly recipe is a Chinese family favourite, very simple to cook and great for dinner parties. It’s a one-pot recipe where you just put the ingredients in the pot and let it cook for a few hours with very little intervention. The result is a meltingly soft braised pork belly with unctuous soy based sauce, great for a Chinese meal with multiple dishes or added to rice vermicelli as a quick noodle dish.

Slow Cooked Pork Belly Recipe

Here I am using my Crockpot which has a 4l capacity and is more than enough to make this recipe. I like the removable stoneware bowl that comes with this Crockpot as you can serve this on the table straight from the pot and makes it very easy to clean. This slow cooker model has 3 settings, High,  Low and Warm. There is a digital version which has programmable settings, you can set a start time and it has an auto warming feature too. This latest Crockpot model, a 3.5l version with a digital display, countdown timer and also programmable.

How to cook Chinese braised pork belly in a crockpot

Pork belly is a cut of meat that needs slow cooking to tenderise. Using a Crockpot or slow cooker is ideal. For any pork belly recipe, you can convert the timings to cook this in the slow cooker. One of the advantages of this is that you don’t have to watch the pan on the stove as that is likely to burn or dry up, even with regular stirring.

After 2-3 hours, the belly pork would have cooked through, the meat and fat is meltingly soft that you can even cut it with a spoon. It is simply the most pain free way to cook this delicious cut of pork. 

Firstly, you need to boil the pork in a pot of water wiht some ginger for about 15 minutes and skim off the scum. This removes any of the excess blood from the pork, which also has the effect of reducing the gamey taste of pork (especially in the pork we get in the UK).

Then transfer the pork belly into the slow cooker and add in all other ingredients.

Creating a reusable Master Stock for braising meats

Note: You can double or triple the braising liquid as you can reuse this for other braising dishes like soy sauce chicken. This braising liquid is called Master stock and some Chinese kitchens have a pot of this on the go continuously and some are even decades old!

Cook on high for about 1 hour and turn it down to low for a further 3 hours. If you want to leave it all day, just bring it to a boil and turn it down to low for up to 8 hours. After 4 hours, the fat would have rendered down and the meat is tender.

You can test for seasoning at this point and add more soy sauce, sea salt or sugar as needed.

For a side dish or garnish, cut the broccoli into florets and steam or air fry when you are ready to serve. I like to decorate my serving bowl with broccoli as the bright green is a nice contrast to the dark mahogany pieces of meat.

Instead of this braised pork belly recipe, you can use a BBQ dry rub and cook it for 2 hours in the slowcooker, you will end up with pulled pork. You can use the seasonings in this easy cheat for pulled pork recipe too. 

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Slow Cooker Braised Pork Belly

This is a very simple dish to cook and is delicious the next day. I usually make a very big batch and freeze the extra. It is very quick to reheat. As an alternative to serving it with rice, you can add some rice noodles and some sliced chillies to make a braised noodle dish. This is one of my favourite ways of using any leftovers.

Prep Time 15 minutes minutes

Cook Time 4 hours hours

Total Time 4 hours hours 15 minutes minutes

Ingredients

• 2 kg belly pork cut into small pieces
• 2 thumb size pieces of ginger
• 5 star anise
• 8 tbsp dark soya sauce
• 8 tbsp Shao Xing rice wine or cooking sherry if you can’t get that
• 5 tbsp sugar or to taste
• 5 cloves of garlic don’t need to peel
• 1 head of broccoli

Instructions

• Boil the pork in a pot of water for about 15 minutes and skim off the scum.
• Transfer pork into the slow cooker and add in all other ingredients
• Cook on high for about 1 hour and turn it down to low for a further 3. If you want to leave it all day, just bring it to a boil and turn it down to low for up to 8 hours.
• After 4 hours, the fat would have rendered down and the meat is tender.
• You can test for seasoning at this point and add more soya sauce or sugar as needed.
• Cut the broccoli into florets and steam when ready to serve. I like to decorate my serving bowl with broccoli as the bright green is a nice contrast to the bowl of meat.
• Serve with hot steamed rice.

Notes

If you don’t like too much fat, let the pot cool and you can easily spoon off the fat from the top.

This is a dish that I like to cook for Chinese New Year, making it extra special with the addition of some dried shiitake mushrooms. Here are some other Chinese Slow Cooker recipes you can try. 

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How to choose the right slow cooker

1. Size. The size is the first thing to consider. Do you normally cook for a big family or just for two. The bigger ones take up a lot of space on your kitchen counter if you don’t use it often. I have both the smallest one and this 4 L Crockpot for different purposes. I use the small one to make 2 portions of soup.
2. Manual or Digital controls. Most slow cookers have manual settings, with just a low or high setting. The newer ones have digital control and digtial displays. The digital versions have automatic countdowns and automatic keep-warm features.
3. Shape. You have a choice of a round or oval shape and the right one for you depends on what you want to cook in it.
4. Removable Bowl. Most of the bowls in the larger slow cookers are removable. They are usually made of stoneware and are strong enough to be used in the oven and dishwasher safe.
5. Glass lid. I like a sturdy glass lid that will sit on the pot nicely with no gaps and you can check how the food is cooking without opening the lid.

Here is a selection from Amazon: 

Slow cookers are not that high tech and consequently, they are very reasonably priced for a very helpful piece of kitchen equipment. The one pictured above has 3 functions, low, warm and high. With just these choices, it makes it very simple to understand and use.

This one is the manual version not digital, so it’s cheaper. It does the same job but you can’t programme a start time and there is not auto warming feature. 

Note: The Crockpot was gifted. 

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