Porchetta for Christmas dinner?

Maybe I was really hungry when I saw this recipe for porchetta on the Serious Eats website:

http://bit.ly/vYdAQD

but, it looked absolutely delicious. So now I'm thinking I would like to make it for our Christmas dinner. Do you all think this is "fancy" enough for such an occasion? I don't know why I'm obsessing over this, since it's just my husband and me, but normally, I prepare either a rib roast or beef tenderloin, with lots of leftovers.

My other question relates to where to purchase the pork belly: Paulina's Meat Market or Peoria Packing? If I can save a substantial sum per pound, I'm very willing to experience Peoria Packing.

Thanks for your thoughts!

You'll save a substantial amount and you'll get to experience the Peoria Packing Parking Lot Pas de cinquantaine de voitures!

Seriously, Peoria is selling bone in pork loins @ $1.79/lb and Paulina's website lists pork belly @ $5.50/lb!

If you need "pointers" or info about making
This classic Roman dish....stop in @Freddy's in Cicero...
And he'll be glad to share his insights gleaned from
Preparing this dish weekly @his place (Saturday)......just be
Surebto chat him up early before they get slammed there around
Noon to 1:30ish.

Thanks for posting this. I'm trying to figure out a time to make this in the near future.

The dish is definitely "special enough," in my opinion. For me, if it's a special occasion, I'd spend more to get good quality meat, rather than industrial pork. Call Butcher and Larder. You might also out pork available at the farmer's market, Gepperth's, Whole Foods, Lincoln Quality Meats, Gene's Sausage shop.

I will be making porchetta for our X-mas Eve's Eve dinner the 23rd. I plan on wrapping a 6 pound belly around a loin about 2/3 to half the size. I found a recipe on Bon Appetit which I am using as a base but I plan on incorporating some sort of filling or stuffing as well. Perhaps something like DiNic's style roast pork with broccoli rabe and sharp provolone.

I made one a few years back using a light bread crumb and prosciutto stuffing, roasted with thinly sliced lemon on top. I think it is definitely good enough for a special occasion and a nice variation from the usual turkey or prime rib. I will be getting these meats from Casey's (Western Springs) as they are who my father and brother go to for meats.

mchodera wrote:You'll save a substantial amount and you'll get to experience the Peoria Packing Parking Lot Pas de cinquantaine de voitures!

Seriously, Peoria is selling bone in pork loins @ $1.79/lb and Paulina's website lists pork belly @ $5.50/lb!

One other poster posited that what I saved in price might be disappointing in quality; have you purchased pork belly from Peoria Packing?

Hombre de Acero wrote:If you need "pointers" or info about making
This classic Roman dish....stop in @Freddy's in Cicero...
And he'll be glad to share his insights gleaned from
Preparing this dish weekly @his place (Saturday)......just be
Surebto chat him up early before they get slammed there around
Noon to 1:30ish.

Thanks, Hombre; in almost 20 years of living in Chicago (both city and now suburbs), I've never actually been to Cicero! Sounds like I need to remedy that...

Darren72 wrote:Thanks for posting this. I'm trying to figure out a time to make this in the near future.

The dish is definitely "special enough," in my opinion. For me, if it's a special occasion, I'd spend more to get good quality meat, rather than industrial pork. Call Butcher and Larder. You might also out pork available at the farmer's market, Gepperth's, Whole Foods, Lincoln Quality Meats, Gene's Sausage shop.

If you make it before Christmas, please post on your recipe and how it turned out! I'm pretty sold now on doing this for Christmas; based on your suggestions, I might just start my search for the perfect pork belly at my local butcher, Devon Avenue Meats in Park Ridge. Vince has always been able to obtain meats for me that are outside their regular offerings but that are of high quality. I just don't know about price. If he's too expensive, I'll start checking other places.

Corinne wrote:I will be making porchetta for our X-mas Eve's Eve dinner the 23rd. I plan on wrapping a 6 pound belly around a loin about 2/3 to half the size. I found a recipe on Bon Appetit which I am using as a base but I plan on incorporating some sort of filling or stuffing as well. Perhaps something like DiNic's style roast pork with broccoli rabe and sharp provolone.

I made one a few years back using a light bread crumb and prosciutto stuffing, roasted with thinly sliced lemon on top. I think it is definitely good enough for a special occasion and a nice variation from the usual turkey or prime rib. I will be getting these meats from Casey's (Western Springs) as they are who my father and brother go to for meats.

Corinne,

Is that Bon Appetit recipe online? I'd love to compare it to the Serious Eats version, although the fellow who posted there, J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, used to work at Cook's Illustrated, so I trust what he writes.

Thanks, and good luck with your porchetta! Please post on how it turned out.

So I prepared an entire pork belly (special-ordered for $3.15/lb. from Devon Avenue Meats in Park Ridge) and cooked half of it to take to Christmas dinner. Not to brag or anything, but all the guests said it was absolutely wondrously delicious! Everyone loved it, and I ended up gifting the remnants to our hostess because she enjoyed it so much.

Now I am trying to decide when to cook the other half...because it's had more time for the spices to marry into the pork belly, it's possible this half will taste even better.

I highly recommend porchetta for a special treat!

Devon Avenue Meats
(Inside Morningfield's Market)
800 Devon Avenue
Park Ridge, IL 60068
http://www.devonavenuemeats.com
847/825-0478

I made one yesterday, using a belly wrapped around a collar. Purchased from Butcher and Larder, and since I wasn't enamored of using a loin in the middle, Rob suggested the collar, which worked well. I followed most of the directions from the Serious Eats link above, as well as using the ingredients from http://www.7x7.com/recipes/secret-recip ... a-roliroti and http://www.mercurynews.com/food-wine-he ... i_18200470

It sat 24 hrs in the fridge with the seasonings, then I sat it out on the counter for an hour, then it went into the oven. I finally took it out after 7.5 hours, and it probably could have been in there longer.

After letting it rest, I chopped the roast up so that everyone would get some of the fat, meat, and crispy skin in each bite, and served it as sandwiches, on ciabatta rolls with arugala and onion jam.

These aren't good pictures, I should have popped the collar back into the belly roll before shooting - and I probably could have used some help tying it up, since I clearly didn't get it as tight as it could have been. I think I might double the amount of the (non-salt) seasonings next time, they really didn't come through.

http://instagram.com/p/ogycVvDlwW/
http://instagram.com/p/ogv85aDl8f/

Followed a lot of the advice in this thread and the end result was on point, crisp exterior, globules of fat with an almost marrow like texture, and aggressively seasoned meat. Went pretty traditional with a rosemary, sage, garlic, and lemon zest wet paste and a dry rub of salt, fennel, red pepper flake, and black peppercorns…I went pretty heavy handed on both (was a bit worried I over seasoned) and it ended up just right. Like Leek I wasn't too hot on the idea of using a loin, so I wrapped the belly around a deboned and butterflied shoulder roast. The seasoned and tied roast sat in the fridge for about 48 hours and was roasted for about 8 hours at 300 before a final blast at 450. Tip, transfer the roasting rack to a new backing sheet before the final high heat blast to prevent all the accumulated drippings from burning. Crap pic, but you get the idea. I'll be doing this again for sure.

Stunning--thanks for posting results and your tips!

Thanks. Leftovers are making for top shelf cold cuts. My lunch game is gonna be right for the next couple days.

Georgeous -- little better in my book than a traditionally prepared porchetta with that crispy, brittle exterior. Looks like you nailed it.

For my dish at a recent 'Picnic-In-Provence' dinner party hosted by some friends, I took my first stab at Porchetta, using Herbs De Provence to line up with the theme . . .


Provençal Porchetta, trussed and ready to roast


Provençal Porchetta, post-roast

To stay on theme, this was ultimately sliced into slabs and served warm on sandwiches with a home-made caper-anchovy aioli, plus market lettuce and tomatoes.

If I had it to do over again, I'd cook the porchetta longer and at a lower temperature. Not only would I have liked it to have rendered out a bit more of the fat before it needed to come out of the oven, but it wasn't quite as tender all the way through as I would have liked it. Not bad for a first effort but I look forward to doing it better next time, which could very well be for my family's Christmas dinner.

=R=

ronnie_suburban wrote:Not bad for a first effort

Not bad at all, I'd eat that in a heartbeat!

Low & Slow 2 contains a smoker porchetta which I typically serve with a salsa verde, recipe in LS 2 as well, turns out tasty if I do say so myself.

ronnie_suburban wrote:For my dish at a recent 'Picnic-In-Provence' dinner party hosted by some friends, I took my first stab at Porchetta, using Herbs De Provence to line up with the theme . . .



If I had it to do over again, I'd cook the porchetta longer and at a lower temperature. Not only would I have liked it to have rendered out a bit more of the fat before it needed to come out of the oven, but it wasn't quite as tender all the way through as I would have liked it. Not bad for a first effort but I look forward to doing it better next time, which could very well be for my family's Christmas dinner.

=R=

Do you remember what temp you used and how long? I was thinking 275 for around 7 hours, but was concerned that might be to low.

Just made a half size one using a slab of belly and a half loin, using the recipe from Cheers to the Publican. Big issue with the recipe, it says to cook low 300F for 90 min until it's got a 100F internal temp. That took more like 3 hours. Also, with a filling of herbs and olive oil, the belly didn't stick to the loin, it all uncurled when I sliced. But delicious. I did run longer overall, as they say take it out at 115. I went to 140, still juicy and much crispier on the outside

lougord99 wrote:Do you remember what temp you used and how long? I was thinking 275 for around 7 hours, but was concerned that might be to low.

I think that might be good. If it cooks too fast, it'll be done before the skin softens enough to be palatable. And the meat, especially the belly, will be too chewy. After watching a bunch of youtube videos on the subject, I decided to add a wee bit of wine to a test run I did last week, since many seasoned Porchettistas (yes, I made this word up) seem to favor that. I think it helped. I cooked it at 275 F in a roasting pan, and loosely covered it with foil for a small amount of time, which allowed the skin to soften. Once it did, I removed the foil and let it slow roast the rest of the way. The result was excellent, with tender, juicy meat, and skin that was crispy but not too hard to actually chew.

On doneness, you're not really looking for a particular temperature as much as a texture. I'm guessing that around 195 F is about where it'll end up but that's just a guess. And it's important to let it rest for a good long while after you cook it, maybe up to an hour or more. That "congealing" time allows the flavor and the texture to come back together. Not only will some of the fat and juices re-absorb into the meat but you'll get nice, intact slices if you take this approach.

The irony is that even though I think I've now got this figured out, we decided to scrap it for Christmas. My wife and I decided that because it's such a lush, fatty roast, our Christmas day guests were the wrong crowd for it. Instead, I got some very nicely marbled prime beef tenderloins, which will be more of a crowd pleaser. On the upside, we've been enjoying some stunningly delicious porchetta sandwiches all week. With porchetta, a little goes a long way.

=R=

Here are some shots of the test-run porchetta I made last week. These were taken when it was cold and I was slicing some of it off to make sandwiches . . .


Cold Porchetta
You can probably see that I butterflied the roast so that more of the herb stuffing would stay in place.


Cold Porchetta Slice

I've had sandwich success using ciabatta rolls. Slice the bread open and toast it. Then place the cold porchetta inside the roll add some cheese if you want. I've been using provolone but no cheese is necessary. After that, I wrap the sandwiches up tight in parchment (to prevent sticking and enable easy unwrapping), then foil, and bake them for about 30-40 minutes at 350 F. I generally serve them with a little bit of Fallot dijon mustard and the results have been great (even though purists would probably cringe at the use of any condiments).

Speaking of which, I did recover some nice jus and rendered fat from the initial cook, so I'm sure I'll figure out a good way to incorporate them eventually.

=R=

Great. Thank you.

Ronnie,

Wow, that porchetta looks amazing!

Bravo!

The irony is that even though I think I've now got this figured out, we decided to scrap it for Christmas. My wife and I decided that because it's such a lush, fatty roast, our Christmas day guests were the wrong crowd for it.

Those pictures look amazing, and remind me of my own experience. I used the serious-eats sous-vide method and butterflied a very nice belly acquired at Butcher&Larder. It was crazy good, but just way too decadent for our Christmas Eve gathering - which has no shortage of good eats.