Hacking The Italian Porchetta - The Ultimate Recipe

this video was sponsored by skillshare hey everybody welcome to the channel i hope you're having a great day my name is eric and i'm glad you could be here because today we are going to be talking about the porchetta roast if you're not familiar with the italian porchetta let me explain when you butcher the center two primals of a pig and you remove the spine and the ribs you're left with the loin and the belly the porchetta is the loin and the belly heavily seasoned and then rolled up once it's rolled up it's tied up tight and it's roasted the end result is a very flavorful very crispy outer skin roast that's typically served thinly sliced to cook a porchetta roast properly is extremely challenging and the reason is because the belly cooks at a different temperature than the loin and so it's very easy to either undercook the belly and have the loin come out perfectly juicy and perfectly tender or overcook the loin and have the belly come out perfectly juicy and perfectly tender and so it's a very difficult roast to cook a lot of people will hack the porchetta by eliminating the loin altogether and just seasoning the belly rolling it and then cooking it the same way and what you end up getting is a similar style of roast like the porchetta but you end up missing that entire center muscle that just adds so much to the porchetta and so what i'm going to do today is show you how i make the porchetta roast and we've made a couple of changes to the original italian recipe you're going to get a beautiful crispy outer skin you're going to get a juicy succulent flavorful bite and you do not have to worry about overcooking it it's brilliant and so before we make the porchetta a quick word from today's sponsor are you familiar with skillshare skillshare is an online learning community with literally thousands of some pretty sweet classes for people like us what i am particularly enjoying about skillshare is that i get to dive deep into their classes and explore new skills which happens to be one of my favorite things to do but if you aren't a new skills kind of person you can always go to skillshare and deepen the passions that you currently have some of you may know that i have started a youtube series called my sandwich obsession i love sandwiches and so i do a lot of research about sandwiches and i am currently following a class called the perfect grilled cheese a mini class to master the sandwich learned with plated by elena carp and what i'm digging about this class is how elena breaks down the different cheeses and the different cheese selections to produce the perfect grilled cheese who doesn't love a perfectly made grilled cheese i can't wait to share my version with you skillshare is set up specifically for learning so unlike this video there are no ads and they are constantly adding new premium classes so you can stay focused and chase that creativity rabbit down the hole or wherever it's going right now skillshare is running a special promotion for a very limited time where the first thousand of my subscribers who click the link in the description box below will get premium skillshare for free for one month check out skillshare for yourself we want to thank skillshare for sponsoring this video let's make porchetta our version of porchetta is going to start off with a boneless pork shoulder now this is also known as a boston butt and we're just going to go ahead and take a peek at it because i'm going to show you how to process this pork shoulder so this is the top half of the pork shoulder if you flip it over this would be the under side of the pork shoulder and where my hand is is where the leg extends out and right here is along the spine of the pig so this would be along the very back now just so that you know what section we're looking at this particular muscle is part of the neck muscle and if we look at this a little closer this muscle is always going to be at the top in competition barbecue it's known as the money muscle so that's one identifiable part we're going to be extracting this muscle right here from the pork shoulder in essence the top third of the pork shoulder every pork shoulder is going to have this all you got to do is go to the grocery store buy you a boston butt and then cut off that top third by just slicing it all the way down and basically we're going to be replacing the loin with this neck muscle if you've been following my channel you'll also know that this is called the copa or capicola in italy this is loaded with connective tissue inner muscular fat and can withstand a higher temperature and longer cooking time so we're going to set that to the side as we now look at the second piece which is our pork belly the pig that this belly came from wasn't very fat matter of fact it was a young pig and the very first thing i'm going to do is just hit it with the torch to remove any hairs that my butcher might have missed so once we've got that going on i'm going to go ahead and trim that pork belly and then just save whatever i trim off for sausages or something later on down the road so i'm gonna take my pork shoulder aka capicola and roll it up and once i get a nice little roll on it i'm going to just mark that spot with a knife and that's where we're going to cut it i don't want a lot of excess trim because i want this entire pork belly to get nice and crispy and it doesn't crisp up so well if it overlaps so we're just going to give that a little cut with our knife and what's remaining will be what we're going to be using for this porchetta at this point we're going to get everything ready for the seasoning so i'm going to start by gently scoring the underside or the meat side of the pork belly [Music] now that that's done let's get our skin crispy we're going to start with regular salt and some baking powder when you combine salt and baking powder and you apply it to the skin surface of your pork belly it not only starts to draw out moisture but it changes the alkalinity of the skin which is going to turn into an absolutely incredible super crispy bite which is what we're looking for so i'm going to take about half of my mixture rub it onto the skin side of the belly really good and then once i have it completely rubbed and ready to go we're just going to go ahead and turn it over and begin the seasoning process the other half of the mixture i'll add once we're finished so what i like to do when it comes to seasoning my porchetta is simply weigh the belly and weigh the pork shoulder and then adjust the seasonings as necessary you obviously don't have to do this as you can just eyeball the spices you know throw your salt and pepper and fennel pollen and all that stuff on there um i like to weigh it because i like the consistency of the flavor in the description box below there will be a link to a recipe where if you input the weight of your belly and your shoulder it will automatically calculate all of the different spices so let's look at what we're adding we're going to start off with some salt celery seed red chili flakes smoked paprika black pepper garlic powder i like garlic powder we're going to be adding some fennel pollen this is a great ingredient a little on the expensive side but really makes a huge difference in the flavor of your porchetta we're also going to be adding a touch of msg obviously optional ingredient and then we're just going to give that a little mix and that's what we're going to be using to spice our belly and our copa as we roll this up so i'm just going to go ahead and apply all this and the thing is is that it's been measured out so i know that i'm not over seasoning my porchetta once i get it onto the belly the meat side i'm just going to rub that into all of those different score marks that i made and then we're going to take the pork shoulder part of it we're going to set that on top and then just go ahead and apply the rest of the seasonings 100 of your spices will be used uh for this porchetta once you're finished so you won't have anything left over oh and one thing i did add at the very end was a touch of oregano and thyme you can add whatever fresh herbs you like lemon zest is also a very nice ingredient so like i said in the description box below you'll find the recipe we're going to go ahead and tie this off so my first knot is just going to be a regular knot just to kind of hold everything in place and then every knot after that is going to be a butcher's knot because a butcher's knot allows you to really tighten up that roast and just to let you know that all we're doing in this step is we're seasoning our belly we're seasoning our you know pork shoulder and then we're allowing the skin to dry out so we're going to actually re-tie this tomorrow after it comes out of the refrigerator because tomorrow we're going to get it ready to cook so this step is all about seasoning it's all about drying that skin which is critical in having a very flavorful very crispy porchetta so now that our roast is tied up i'm going to transfer this to a baking tray with a rack on it and that's going to allow airflow you know on top and bottom and then i'm going to apply the rest of my salt and baking powder mixture to all sides of this porchetta i just want to make sure that i rub it in and so i'm going to get the sides the tops the bottoms and all the rounds and once i get that nice and coated we're going to take this and we're going to sit this in our refrigerator uncovered overnight during the night it's going to draw moisture out a lot of things are going to happen our meat is going to get seasoned and this is what it's going to look like the next day the skin itself should be a little damp it should have expelled as you can see there a lot of juice a lot of moisture and now all we need to do is clean that roast up and get it ready to cook so i'm just going to go ahead and cut off my strings because like i said earlier we're going to completely retie this if you're going to be making this have a roll of paper towels handy because we're going to be blotting this dry many times through this process so let's go ahead and open up that belly remove that particular pork shoulder part and so that's going to get set to the side we want the skin side up for this next step and as we finish removing any of the strings that might have remained from the initial tying grab you a bunch of paper towels and then just begin wiping this thing clean we want it free of salt free of baking powder totally clean is what we're looking for because the last step is to score this pork belly now notice the way the lines are our shoulder muscle is going to sit just like this and so we want our score marks to be in the opposite direction of our shoulder muscle so that they make relatively easy sliceable cuts and it looks kind of cool so here's how we're going to do that i'm going to take a box cutter and you can use a very sharp knife although i do have to say that cutting pork skin with a knife wreaks havoc on the edge so let's just go ahead and use that box cutter and i'm cutting roughly about one centimeter spaces between lines and i'm just basically making a little mark at the bottom that's going to kind of let me know where to start my line so i can line them up relatively even next i'm going to do the exact same thing around the middle of the belly and that's going to give me my second point of reference so that all i have to do is match up the lines with the ruler and finish the cuts [Music] this process can be a little tedious but with a nice sharp box cutter you could do it relatively quick now you don't want to go too deep into the skin i actually cut a little too deep on one section and i'll show you how we'll fix that in a minute but you don't want to pierce the fat so just barely cut into the skin and that's really all you're looking for it's just a very light score mark and now that we've got everything scored up we've got our pork belly back into the center of that roast we're just going to use some butcher's knots to tie this thing tight as we are ready to get this thing cooking [Music] notice this little slice on the left i cut the skin way too deep the meat part wasn't as thick there as it was on the other side i'm just going to cut that completely off and basically create two roasts we're going to have one smaller one and one large one and the great thing about porchetta just so you know it freezes exceptionally well so i'm gonna stick a meat thermometer inside the center of that roast this is one by meter absolutely incredible shoots the information over to your smartphone and you don't have to worry about constantly checking it if you don't have one of these meat thermometers that go in the oven after about four hours or so just check the temperature of the center of the roast and if it's at 180 185 fahrenheit you should be good to go all right so i'm just gonna go ahead and put those two together just like that no big deal we're gonna stick it into our oven the temperature of our oven is set at 250 degrees fahrenheit or 121 celsius we're going to close that off and let it cook until the internal temperature reaches 180 fahrenheit or 82 celsius at which point we're going to remove it from the oven and go ahead and tint this up with some aluminum foil or like i'm doing here in my case i'm just putting a slightly larger container on top of it and we're going to keep it in there as we raise the temperature of our oven to 500 degrees fahrenheit or 260 degrees celsius as soon as your oven gets to temperature we're going to go ahead and put our porchetta back in notice i'm now flipping the porchetta so that this can get crispy on all sides so we're going to start with the bottom facing up about halfway through this last cooking step i'm gonna flip it back around and the total cooking time at 500 degrees fahrenheit is going to be roughly something like 20 to 30 minutes it just really depends on your oven and whether or not you have the broil feature this oven doesn't have a broil feature and so it took about 30 35 minutes so you just want to check it halfway through the cooking process remember to flip it over and so now we're right side up if you don't uh flip this during this last little step the bottom can get a little uh tough and chewy and so this way it ensures that everything gets nice and crispy as soon as it's done cooking pull it out of the oven and we're going to let it rest for about 20 minutes don't be tempted to cut into it just yet this resting period allows those juices to re-incorporate and that skin will actually continue to crisp up as it dries out a little bit and if we were to take the temperature right now you'll notice that during this last little cooking process you end up increasing the temperature to about 200 degrees 202 so this is going to be fall apart tender and look at that there is our crispy crispy porchetta the outside is incredibly firm let's give it a little tap and see what happens that sounds so good and it smells amazing so let's go ahead and cut it open and see what it tastes like [Music] so [Music] so [Music] okay let's go ahead and taste our porchetta and see how we did i mean this thing looks incredibly juicy so let's just see how it tastes wow that is delicious whoa the meat is so tender and so juicy seasoned perfectly it's a it's a little spicy because of the red chili flakes so you know you can adjust that depending on the heat level that you like the salt level is perfect and the skin i mean the skin is so crispy it was cooked perfectly the idea is to have that skin fluff up a little bit so that when you bite it you get this really nice airy crispy crunch and let me just grab a couple little pieces of this skin and this was perfect so [Music] very light very crispy absolutely amazing and i hope you get a chance to try this version of the classic porchetta if you have any questions leave them in the comment section below if you like this video found it helpful or entertaining in any way a great big thumbs up is always appreciated and if you're new to our channel take a moment hit that subscribe button and that notification bell we are about to start celebrate sausage season two in less than a week daily upload through the month of october i don't want you to miss a single episode we'll see you then bye-bye [Music] do [Music] you

Channel: 2 Guys & A Cooler

Views: 53,197

Keywords: Italian Porchetta, How to cook a porchetta, Crispy pork belly, Easy Italian Recipes, how to cook a roast, Easy recipes, How to make porchetta, Juicy pork roast, Comfort food

Id: F6I7q1n4Gnw

Length: 19min 8sec (1148 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 25 2021