Porchetta

Belly rolled around loin with fennel, cooked low then blasted for the crackling.

Pork. Not vegetarian — contains pork.

Ingredients

• 3 kg pork belly, skin on, in one rectangular piece
• 1.2 kg pork loin, trimmed
• 4 tablespoons wild fennel seeds and fronds
• 8 garlic cloves, crushed
• 2 tablespoons black peppercorns, coarsely ground
• 2 tablespoons rosemary leaves, chopped
• 45 g flaky salt, plus more for the skin
• butcher's string

Method

1. SCORE THE FLESH SIDE ONLY, in a diamond pattern, and leave the skin untouched and unscored. Cuts in the skin let fat escape and give you patchy crackling instead of a sheet.
2. Rub the flesh side with the garlic, fennel, pepper, rosemary and most of the salt, right into the scores.
3. Lay the loin along one long edge and roll the belly tightly around it. Tie at 3 cm intervals, firmly enough to dent the meat.
4. DRY THE SKIN UNCOVERED IN THE FRIDGE FOR 24 HOURS, then rub it with salt only. A damp skin steams and will never crackle, and this is the step that cannot be hurried on the day.
5. Roast at 150C for 4 hours. The roll is dense and the loin in the middle has to reach temperature without the belly rendering away.
6. NOW RAISE IT TO 240C FOR 25 MINUTES to blister the skin. The two stages do different jobs and neither can do both: low heat alone leaves leather, high heat alone burns the outside around raw meat.
7. Rest it 30 minutes before cutting. Cut with a serrated knife so the crackling does not shatter off the slice.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Italy · All recipes