Porchetta

I wanted to try something with the new rotisserie, and we were entertaining this past weekend. I tried homemade porchetta...the results were fantastic....but I'm not sure rotisserie is the way to go. Started by making herb rub and homemade fennel sausage:




Boned the pig, added the rub, sausage and pork tenderloins;

 

Next I trussed to the spit, and roasted over coals for about 6 hours;


Off the spit, before carving:



My helper:


End product.

 

Looks Great Neil! What was in the fennel herb rub? If ya don't mind me asking.

 

Jeffrey -

Fennel (seed) was in the sausage. The herb rub is shallots, garlic, lemon juice and zest, orange zest, olive oil, parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme.

 

Wow. That looks amazing!

 

Awesome and beautiful awesomeness Neil

But better show me what have you done with the trotters to this maiale ump

 

Porky goodness at its best!

Why so?

 

Good show Neil! Curious how you got your hands on such a young suckling? How much did it weigh before boning? Looks aged nicely too. Impressive

Most important, what size/knife were you using?

 

Thanks guys!

Bieniek - I smoked the trotters, then made a stock with them which I eventually reduced to a jus for the porchetta.

Jim - 2 things. First, by boning the pig he was literally spineless - so it took some extra wiring midway through to finish the porchetta on the spit. More to the point - this ended up being kind of a hybrid. The mid section, where the belly and loin are, is what I stuffed to make the porchetta. This is what we sliced. We were then left with small hams and shoulder meat, plus jowls etc. Delicious!...but not what I set out to make per se. What I probably should have said is next time I'll just make it with a whole belly, as there wasn't a huge gain from using the whole pig and it was more than the guests could eat. Stay tuned, as we're roasting a 100 pound pig on the spit next week

Mucho - this guy wasn't quite as small as a typical suckling...was about 36 pounds before boning. We have a lot of local farms, so it's a matter of calling around to see who has what. The knife is a 150 mm Tojiro DP honesuki.

 

Seriously, who do I need to bribe to come over. That looks delicious. Every single time I look.

 

Dude Neal I love your photography and your food. Its just awesome.
Makes me gellous [je]
Its good to see the passion continues.

 

Great work and great photos!

Your helper looks a lot like mine! He got a little ice cream as a treat yesterday...was a very good boy during biopsies at the vet.

 

Awesome - you are now the third Vizsla owner I've met on this and the other KKF.

 

Never heard of a Vizsla before, nice article on Wikipedia though...mine is a Catahoula Leopard Hound...he just looks a lot like yours!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catahoula_Cur