Stegt Flæsk med Persillesovs

Every country has a dish that settles arguments. In Denmark, it's this one. When the Ministry of Food held a national vote in 2014 to choose Denmark's official national dish, stegt flæsk med persillesovs won by a distance. Nobody was surprised. It had been the national dish in everything but name for as long as anyone could remember.

What you're making is simple and extraordinary at the same time. Slices of pork belly, fried slowly in their own rendered fat until the edges curl and the surface turns to something between gold and glass. Boiled potatoes, warm and floury. And persillesovs, a parsley sauce so generous with fresh green herbs that the white sauce beneath them almost disappears. That's it. Three components, none of them difficult, all of them dependent on doing a few things right.

Here's what matters most: the pork goes into a cold pan. Not a hot pan with oil. A cold, dry pan. The heat builds slowly, the fat renders out of the belly, and the pork fries in its own fat. This is the difference between pork belly that shatters between your teeth and pork belly that chews like cardboard. The other thing to watch is the parsley. It goes into the sauce off the heat, right at the end, so it stays vivid green and tastes of the garden, not of the stove. Get those two things right and the rest takes care of itself. This is a dish cooked with love, and you'll taste it.