Roasted Porchetta

Porchetta, originating from central Italy, is a rolled and stuffed pork joint. Regional variations on the dish exist with the stuffing varying from herbs through to chopped entrails and garlic. It’s regarded as a celebratory dish.

This version steps slightly away from the traditional recipes and adds fruit and pine nuts to the traditional herbs. It’s then cooked on the grill to achieve a succulent mouth watering and visually stunning dish.

The pork belly needs to be top quality and the skin dry. Ask your butcher to score the skin lengthways along the joint so that when it’s rolled the cuts allow slices of the porchetta to be cut easily. Avoid pre packed pork as you’ll find it almost impossible to get the skin to crackle as it will be too moist.

BBQ Temperature

Ingredients

  • 2kg pork belly with the ribs removed, scored down the joint’s skin
  • 100g raisins
  • 100g dried apricots
  • 75g pine nuts
  • 5-10 sage leaves, chopped coarsely
  • 1/2 bunch flat leaf parsley, chopped coarsely
  • 200g spiced sausage meat or 4 sausages with the skins removed
  • 4 cloves of garlic, chopped coarsely
  • Olive oil
  • Maldon salt
  • 1 tsp black pepper, coarsely ground

Equipment

Method

Preparing the porchetta

  1. Unpack your pork belly and if possible leave uncovered in your fridge overnight, skin side up to dry a little.
  2. Place your pork belly skin side down onto a chopping board.
  3. Place your sausage meat all the way down the long side of your joint.
  4. Sprinkle on the raisins, apricots, pine nuts, sage, parsley, black pepper and garlic making sure they cover the full width of the belly.
  5. Roll your pork belly, normally the edges will meet when you roll it tightly.
  6. Tie your rolled pork belly firmly, any knot will do as long as it is kept tightly rolled, even a granny knot works. You might want to get some help just to hold the porchetta nice and tight.
  7. Rub the skin of the porchetta with a generous amount of olive oil and then with lots of Maldon sea salt. This will help it form great crackling.

Cooking the porchetta

  1. Light your grill and set it to 140°C with your rotisserie setup.
  2. Push your rotisserie rod through the centre of you porchetta and secure.
  3. Place on to the grill and cook until the internal temperature is about 88°C. This took about 4.5 hours for me. I measure this with a Meater+.
  4. Now turn up your grill to 220°C and cook for a further 20-30 minutes. During this period your pork skin will start to crackle. Watch it every 5 or so mins as it will go from crackled to burnt very quickly.

Notes

Slice the porchetta into 1.5cm thick slices making sure you remove all the string you used to tie up the joint.

Porchetta is also beautiful served in a crusty roll or some ciabatta. A little pesto gives it a real lift or some salsa verde. Add a little rocket and a drizzle of olive oil. Heaven in a bun. I have even refried my porchetta slices.

Feel free to experiment with different combinations of herbs and fruit to stuff your porchetta.