Porchetta Tricks No One Thinks About

Porchetta….. This juicy, marinated, incredible piece of italian pork is to die for!

The best porchetta I’ve eaten, which was in Italy was cooked with fire. These traditional methods are cooked slowly for hours and create deep flavours and incredible crispy skin.

But when these traditional recipes get adapted to be made at home in a regular oven, the results are always a little disappointing in comparison. You either get juicy meat and no crackling or great crackling and dry meat, its a tough balance to get right.

Today I want to change that!

So my plan is simple, I want to create a tender, juicy, authentic tasting porchetta covered all over with light, crispy crackling. But, I have to use my oven to cook it, I can’t use any specialist equipment, and it can’t take the whole day to prepare. 

I’m going to weave traditional and modern methods together into 1 effective recipe, to create the a homecooked porchetta, that I could happily serve in Italy and not get shouted at.

I haven’t seen any other porchetta recipes using these techniques, I’m really excited to share this with you.

The Marinades

These amounts are all for a 1kg pork belly (4 portions), multiply or divide for your size.

1. 3 x garlic cloves, 20 x sage leaves, 20 x cranks of black pepper, handful of rosemary prongs, handful of parsley leaves, 2 x teaspoons fennel seeds, the zest of one lemon. (the marinde from the video)
2. 3 x garlic, 20 sage leaves, 200g sausage meat, 100g pancetta or guanciale.
3. 3 x garlic, black pepper (as above), 2 teaspoons picked thyme leaves, a handful of rosemary prongs, 10 x mint leaves, 10 x sage leaves.

These are 3 examples of how you could season your porchetta, the options are endless.

Yield: 4 portions

Porchetta Tricks No One Thinks About

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Ingredients

• Poaching Liquor
• 1 litre of water (plus more to top up if needed)
• 75ml vinegar
• 2 teaspoons course salt
• 3 bay leaves
• 10 whole black peppercorns
• 2 x rosemary stalks
• 3 x parsley stalks
• (Marinade ingredients see above)

Instructions

1. Place the poaching onto a low heat to infuse.
2. For the marinade, combine all the ingredients on the chopping board and rough chop together or use a food processor.
3. Prepare the pork belly, remove any silver skin and excess fat, slice the belly open using the book cut method (see video)
4. Season the belly all over with salt, add the marinade to the exposed meat sides of the belly.
5. Roll the belly tightly and tie it into a cylinder (see video)
6. Either marinade in the fridge over night or cook straight away,
7. Poach in the liquor for 60-120 minutes, depending on size (remove from liquor around 85c-90c) (see video)
8. Leave to steam dry for 15 minutes and set oven temperature to 250c.
9. Once the skin appears dry, brush with cooking oil, add a little salt and raise the porchetta off the base of the tray using a trivet (see video).
10. Cook the porchetta for 20-50 minutes until you have great crackling.
11. Rest and slice,