Oven Grilled Liempo is an easy to make dish that avoids problems like having to wash the grill or needing to fan the charcoal over long periods of time. This dish just needs 7 easy to find ingredients. The pork liempo, salt for taste, and sauce made of brown sugar, soy sauce, garlic, chili flakes, and crushed peppercorn. Marinated for some time then popped in the oven for a few minutes till it’s charred at both sides. Filipino-style barbecue made easy.

Oven Grilled Liempo Recipe:

Ingredients :

1 kilo liempo
1/3 cup soy sauce
7 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tbsp chili flakes
1 tbsp crushed peppercorn
salt to taste

Steps :

In a bowl, combine soy sauce, garlic, brown sugar, chili flakes, peppercorn and salt. Stir till sugar dissolves.
Add the liempo to the marinade, make sure it’s coated well before placing these in a plastic or ziplock bag. Do this for each slice. Keep the leftover marinade for basting.
Refrigerate the marinated liempo for at least 1 hour to overnight.
To a wire rack over a baking tray. Place the liempo in one layer over the wire rack. Baste the top of the liempo before placing the wire rack and baking tray in a 370°F or 188°C preheated oven.
Bake for 20 minutes. Flip every 10 minutes, making sure to baste both sides.
After, increase the heat to 430°F or 221°C, bake for another 20 minutes, repeatedly basting after 10 minutes.
After it looks a bit charred and caramelized, take it off the rack.
Serve and Enjoy!

How to make this Oven Grilled Liempo Recipe?

What is grilled liempo? This delicious dish is traditionaly made of pork slices, marinated and grilled over a charcoal stove for a few hours while being basted with a sweet and savory Filipino barbecue sauce. You can typically find them sold as Filipino fast food joints, outside neighborhood homes, or as small side stalls, having different charred dishes such as chicken and the regular barbecue aligned in the grill. Many do their grilling outside the kitchen not only due to the high amount of smoke but helps with bringing this delicious aroma around the area, which in turn helps attract more customers.

How to start? Or How long to grill a liempo? It begins with a nicely cut liempo or pork belly slice marinated in a sauce made of soy sauce for an umami salty and savory taste, garlic as an aromatic that also help remove any foul smells, brown sugar for sweetness and acts as a moisturizer to the meat to keep it juicy, chili flakes for an added spice, with salt and pepper to blend everything together. These are given an hour or overnight to marinade (the longer its marinated the stronger the flavor), keeping what’s leftover from the marinade to be used as basting for later. The important step into making this work is to create a ‘grill’ in the oven by placing a baking tray underneath the wire rack to help catch any drips of juices (this also makes cleaning the oven easier later). On top of the wire rack, the pork slices are placed in one layer then baked a few minutes while being flipped and brushed with the leftover sauce till the sliced look slightly charred and shiny from the sugar. These best enjoyed with freshly cooked rice and a side of an iced cold drink.

Filipino BBQ’s aren’t just for weekends or holidays when you can relax and have a moment’s time to chill, find a nice menu of dishes at the restaurant, or get to go back to the province and have a nice feast of grilled meats and veggies. Satisfy your craving for an easy to do Filipino barbeque dish at the comfort of your own home in just a few minute’s time.

Questions:

Do You need all these ingredients?
- You can remove the garlic or replace the sugar with your choice of sweetener like honey or muscovado, though they can change the way the dish will be cooked as these are more liquid-y (these have more moisture) and might take too long to get its nice and shiny caramelized look.
- You can also find common recipe replacements from “inihaw na liempo sprite” which uses less sugar, adding Sprite instead. Though for this type of marinade, it would be best to simmer it down into a thicker sauce like consistency before basting.
- Or make it simple and just make a “inihaw na liempo salt and pepper” or “grilled pork with salt and pepper”, this dish that does not need time to marinade, just give it a few flips in the oven.

How long to cook liempo in oven?

This depends on how thick the slice of liempo is. Typically the oven temperature for liempo will be around 200°C (392°F) ‘baking’ these for 20 – 45 minutes, more or less then turned up higher to give the pork a nice charred and caramelized look.

Other ways to cook liempo?

Aside from the oven or the grill, you can also make “inihaw na liempo air fryer” by repeating the steps below without the wire rack and baking tray and instead using parchment paper as the lining. You can also ‘pan-fry’ these by heating it to medium heat then to high heat at the end.