Porchetta

Who likes pork? Of course you do....silly question. Well who likes Italian food? Silly question again huh? Of course you do. Well how about slow roasted food? Crispy pork skin? If you answered yes to these questions then you will LOVE this dish! Porchetta. So what is porchetta? It is a boneless fatty cut of pork with a crispy skin on top that is rubbed i garlic and herbs and roasted slowly. It can be done with shoulders or roasts or in my case pork belly. Mmmmmm pork belly. I was going to use a half a shoulder with a nice fat cap but at the grocery store they had pork belly.....and cheap! The only thing was they were in small pieces. But I decided everyone could have their own porchetta for Christmas Eve dinner.  But let me say this.....do not be afraid. My husband was a little nervous because pork belly looks like bacon. There is a big difference though. Bacon is cured and smoked while pork belly is fresh pork meat. And all the fat located in between the layers of meat will keep it moist while rendering down. Its absolutely delicious and something everyone should know how to do to impress friends and family!

Ingredients:
pork shoulder or pork belly

This was some of the pork belly I picked up. You can see a lot of fat mixed with some meat. What you may not see is the skin. It is sitting on the bottom. Dont worry it will be making an appearance soon. The rest of my ingredients are geared for these 3 pieces of pork belly so adjust accordingly. 

5 cloves of garlic, minced

3T fresh minced rosemary

3T fresh minced parsley

2 t fresh minced thyme

1-2t olive oil

black pepper

The night before cooking mix all the ingredients in a small bowl. It should be a thick paste. Do not add too much oil. Rub generously over the non skin side of the pork. Lightly salt the pork. 

Place foil or plastic wrap over your pork and refrigerate overnight.

Using kitchen twine roll up the pork and secure tightly with several pieces of twine. Lay a cooling rack inside a baking sheet. Lightly spray the cooling rack with cooking spray. Place the rolled pork skin side up on the cooling rack. Let the meat sit out for an hour before baking to get the chill off of it.

Preheat your oven to 300 degrees. Place porchetta in the oven. You are going to cook it for about 4-5 hours. So make sure to baste your skin every half hour to hour with the fat drippings on the bottom of the pan. If your pork cooks before your skin is crispy, turn your heat up to 500 degrees until skin is crispy. 

Your pork will sit perfectly at room temperature until ready to slice and eat. I decided to slice these into more manageable pieces. Do make sure you snip all the twine off before slicing and eating. The last thing you and your guests want is to bit into or have to pull off twine. 

Now how gorgeous is that?! Makes me hungry for some right now!! But one thing to keep in mind....there will be some excess fat between your crispy skin and the meat that unless you particularly crave straight fat will not want to eat. I told Alex and his mom to pull it away and not eat it. There was no big issue in doing that. But if you do not wish your guests to do that, you could always peel the skin off and scrape away the fat layer. Then either replace the skin or serve the skin on the side. 

We paired our porchetta with a spinach, dried cranberry, roasted butternut squash, and roasted shallot salad with a hazelnut vinaigrette. It helped bring a brightness to our meal. But one thing is for sure.....we ate very well that night!! Hope yours tastes as good as our did.