Skip to main content
Logo dark

Crispy Porchetta

|Martin Yankov

Overview

A spectacular way to elevate a plain piece of meat. This savory, fatty, and moist boneless pork roast is a simplified version of an Italian cooking tradition. It's a perfect way to bring Italian flavors to your home table. Serve it at dinner gatherings, and if you go the extra mile by cooking it over charcoal, you'll create a crispy, smoky, juicy centerpiece for your friends or family.

Recipe

Prep time: ~2 days

Cooking time: ~2.5 hours

Complexity: Medium

Ingredients

Main Dish

Keep it simple and not too spicy, but feel free to adjust the dry spices to suit your taste

  • 1.5 - 2kg Pork belly with skin (or pork back)

  • 1.5 - 2kg Pork loin

  • 2 White onions

  • 200g Creamy yogurt (at least 10% fat)

  • 1 tsp Salt

  • 1 tsp Ground pepper

  • 2 tbsp Mustard powder

Sauce

A simple, basic velouté sauce:

  • 50g Butter

  • 50g Flour

  • 1 tbsp Dijon mustard

  • 300ml Concentrated beef stock

Side Dish

Simple potato mash:

  • 1kg Potatoes

  • 50g Butter

  • 50ml Milk

Prep the meat

We need to prep the meat, so that each piece fits into the other.

Preparing the Pork Belly

  1. Place the pork belly flat on a countertop, skin side up.

  2. Using a fork or needle meat tenderizer, puncture the skin thoroughly. The more punctures, the crispier the skin will be when cooked.

  3. Flip the pork belly skin side down.

  4. Trim excess fat if necessary, ensuring an even thickness.

  5. With a sharp, long knife, carefully make an incision on the side of the piece, between the skin and fat. Separate the fat from the skin, leaving it attached to the skin at one end. Take care not to puncture the skin during this process.

  6. Turn the piece skin side up again and rub coarse sea salt into the skin, massaging it into the punctures.

  7. Place the pork belly skin side up on a drying rack and refrigerate overnight or longer up to 2 days. This helps dry out the skin for extra crispiness.

Preparing the Pork Loin

  1. Remove all silver skin from the pork loin using a sharp knife.

  2. Butterfly the pork loin:

    • Make an incision along the side, leaving about 1 cm of meat on the outer edge.

    • Stop cutting about 2 cm before slicing through completely.

    • Roll the meat so the slice is on top, then repeat the process, slicing 1 cm from the bottom until you have a flat piece of meat.

  3. Cover the meat with plastic wrap and use a meat mallet to ensure even thickness across the entire piece.

  4. Trim the pork loin to be slightly smaller than the pork belly piece, no more than 2 cm difference.

  5. Rub salt on both sides of the meat.

  6. Place the pork loin on a drying rack and refrigerate alongside the pork belly.

Roll it up

We are now ready to spread the marinade on the meat and roll it up.

Preparing the Marinade and Assembling the Porchetta

  1. In a bowl, grate the onions finely to extract maximum flavor. Remove any large pieces to ensure a consistent marinade texture.

  2. Add yogurt and dry spices to the grated onions, mixing well. The marinade should have a slight yellow tint from the mustard powder, unless you've modified the spice blend to your taste.

  3. Take your butterflied pork loin and spread a thin layer of marinade over the meat, ensuring coverage without oversaturating.

  4. On the fat side of the pork belly, apply some marinade to the areas that won't be in direct contact with the loin.

  5. Place the marinated loin on top of the unwrapped pork belly fat. Roll the pork fat around the loin, allowing the fat to mingle with the loin as you roll.

  6. Once you reach the edge of the pork belly, reverse the rolling direction to complete the final Porchetta wrap.

  7. Secure the roll using butcher's twine and a butcher's knot technique:

    • Start by tying both ends, then secure the middle.
    • Ensure the roll is tight and cohesive without over-tightening.
    • Space the knots evenly, considering future serving portions when cutting

Fire!

Porchetta Roast

It's time for the magic. I recommend doing this over charcoal to add some smoke flavor, but you can also do it in the oven.

  1. Heat up your charcoal to a high temp and setup your grill in such a way that the heat hits the meat from one side. The juices from the porchetta may cause flare-up that will burn the skin and prevent it from crisping up. You can also pierce the meat on a rotisserie, which I recommend for the best even roast.

  2. Make sure you hit the pork skin at your highest temp (260 Co/ 500 F) for at least 35 minutes. If in the oven, place the skin on a rack so that the most skin is exposed and not touching the base. You should see the outside of the skin start to sweat and crisp up.

  3. Reduce the temperature to 150 Co / 300 F and bake until you reach an internal temperature between 65 Co / 150 F and 70 Co / 160 F. (Turn around so that the heat hits different sides of the dish every 30 minutes if you are not using rotisserie)

  4. Once it is ready, leave it outside on a drying rack to cool down and rest for at least 20 minutes. Do not cover so that the skin remains crispy.

Side dish

I like to lay my porchetta slices on fluffy potato mash, but the dish goes well with other side dishes.

  1. Peel and slice your potatoes into even pieces.

  2. Put them in a pot of cold water, add a sprinkle of salt (to increase the boiling temp of the water).

  3. On medium to high heat, let the water start boiling.

  4. Once it boiled for 2-3 minutes, replace the hot water with cold water and put them back on the stove.

  5. Once the water is boiling again, reduce the heat to low, then simmer the potatoes until fork tender.

  6. Once ready, discard the water and leave the potatoes in the pot. Mash the potatoes using a fork, or go fancy with a potato ricer.

  7. Once your potatoes are mashed up, add your butter, salt and your milk, and put the pot on the stove, very low heat.

  8. Using a large wooden spoon, make sure you mix the potato mash together well so that it becomes fluffy.

  9. Do not forget to add salt to taste.

Sauce

  1. Melt your butter in a small casserole on medium heat. Do not let it burn, but just brown a tiny bit.

  2. Add your white flour into the pan and mix well, so the mixture becomes sort of like a paste or wet sand. This is called a roux.

  3. Mix well and start adding your warm stock, do not add too much stock at a time.

  4. Repeat adding stock and mixing until your sauce is liquid, but stays on the back of the spoon.

  5. At this point, your sauce should be velvety brown.

  6. Put your sauce off the heat and let it cool down for a few minutes.

  7. Add the mustard into the sauce and mix it up well.

  8. If you have any lumps, just sift your sauce through a sieve to dissolve them.

Serve

  1. Remove all the knots from the porchetta wrap.

  2. Using a bread knife, slice your pieces at 2cm width.

  3. Put 2 tbsp of mash on your plate, then place the slice on top of it.

  4. Put sauce around your potato mash, so it doesn't soak up the crispy pork skin.

  5. Enjoy!