Porchetta for the Holidays!

Porchetta is getting a lot of face time these days in restaurants and food magazines, with good reason. What’s better than roasted pork, tender and fatty? And what better way to celebrate the holidays than with a beautiful roast of pork.



In Italy, porchetta is a whole pig, deboned and stuffed with rosemary, sage, garlic and salt then roasted with the head on until the skin is dark brown and crunchy. You see the whole pig in markets and sold from trucks on the side of the road, sliced cold and put into a panino or wrapped in paper and sent home to be eaten later. A porchetta sandwich is simple, some tasty moist slices of roast pork with all the fatty goodness, sprinkled with the spices that were rubbed inside the cavity before roasting, and put between two slices of bread or on a roll. They weigh the meat before charging you, but before finishing the panino they cut off a generous slice of the crusty crackly skin, press it on top of the pork and that’s the sandwich. No fancy sauce, no mayo or lettuce or tomato, no pickled veggies. Just pure and simple: roasted pork.

A whole roasted pig would be difficult to duplicate with any regularity here in the US and in researching what’s available, I’ve found that chefs mainly are picking out choice cuts of the pig, tying them together and roasting them like that. Sort of build your own pig project. And it’s easily done at home.

First you need a pork belly, preferably with skin on although skin off is doable. Without the skin however, you don’t get the crunchy goodness, which is my favorite part. Get a pork loin or piece of shoulder and tie the raw pork belly around it, after generously rubbing the inside with a paste of rosemary, sage, fennel, garlic and salt.

Put it in a fairly hot oven and cook it until the outside is brown and crunchy and the internal temp of the pork loin reads about 150 on an instant read thermometer.

Serve it with some sauteed greens and lentils and it's a Very Happy New Year!

Buon Appetito!