Ilocano pork belly boiled, dried, and fried twice until deeply crackling and shatteringly dry — crispier and drier than lechon kawali, and built to stay crunchy even after it cools.
Bagnet comes from the Ilocos region in the northern Philippines, where preserving fried pork belly for days without refrigeration was once a practical necessity — the double-fry technique that makes it so crisp is also what helps it keep. Today it's made mostly for how it tastes rather than for preservation, and it's one of the dishes Ilocanos travel with, packed for pasalubong.
The two-stage fry is the whole story. A first fry at a lower temperature cooks the meat through and starts drawing out moisture; a rest lets that moisture escape from the surface. The second, much hotter fry is what turns the skin into something closer to a cracker than typical crackling — bagnet should shatter audibly when you bite into it, staying crisp for hours rather than softening quickly the way a single-fried pork belly does.
A thick, even slab of pork belly with a good ratio of meat to fat fries more evenly than a thin or unevenly cut piece.
Both are boiled-then-fried pork belly, but bagnet is fried twice at two different temperatures for an even crispier, drier result, and it's traditionally cut into larger, thicker pieces than lechon kawali.
The first fry at a lower temperature cooks the meat through and starts drying the surface; resting lets residual moisture escape. The second, hotter fry is what pushes the skin into deep, shattering crispness.
You can get a reasonably crisp result air frying at a high temperature after boiling and drying, though deep-frying still produces the most authentic, deeply blistered texture bagnet is known for.
