Ever since we first sampled porchetta at Poggio in Sausalito, I always look for it on restaurant menus. It did take me a while to finally sample Roli Roti's porchetta at the Ferry Building Marketplace mainly because the line is usually VERY long but when we visited the Bay Area last year, there was no one in line at 8:00am so we picked up a sample of their porchetta.
Poggio's porchetta
What is porchetta?
It depends who you ask and which restaurant menu you're looking at. My belief is that the "true" porchetta is a boned suckling pig with the loin left intact in the carcass. It may or may not be also stuffed with force meat or ground pork sausage then tied into a cylindrical shape and slow roasted over an open fire usually on a rotisserie. Of course there's no traditional porchetta in the Tatsumoto family and we're obviously not ethnic Italian so I can't say it with any certainty.
Roli Roti's porchetta
Some restaurants use pork belly others may simply use pork butt or shoulder but the only constant is that the outer layer of whatever cut you select must have the skin intact so that after hours of low and slow roasting, you end up with crisp cracklin skin.
So just 2 weeks ago, Costco had full slabs of pork belly for $2.99 per pound in shrink wrap. The average price was somewhere in the $23 to $29 range for a whole slab of belly. Since full slabs of pork belly are never available at the supermarket, I knew that I wanted to purchase a slab for my rendition of porchetta.
Porchetta from The Pig and the Lady
Because this was my first try at roasting a porchetta, I decided to just go with an all belly, herb infused porchetta. First trim to fit on my roasting rack (I'll use the leftover to do a pork belly confit but that's another post) then "prick" the skin side with trussing needles to let moisture escape during the long roasting period to ensure crisp skin. Next score the meat side about an inch apart going about half the thickness of the belly. Season with a mixture of kosher salt, fresh cracked black pepper, freshly ground fennel seeds and minced fresh rosemary and sage making sure to get seasoning in every nook and cranny of the score lines. Now roll and tie with butcher's twine about 1 inch apart and generously season the skin side with salt - again to help pull moisture out for crisp skin.
Roast at 300 degrees for 4 hours then increase the temperature to 500 degrees and roast for another 20 to 30 minutes to really crisp the skin.
Gochiso Gourmet's porchetta
Can you say Mmm, Mmm, Good! The skin wasn't crispy like cracklins, it was more like the crisp edge of the thin layer of fat on a pork chop... still mighty fine eatin' though!
If you are serving this to guests, make sure to remove the butcher's twine or they'll be flossing as they're dining...
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