Jump to content
  • Welcome to the eG Forums, a service of the eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters. The Society is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of the culinary arts. These advertising-free forums are provided free of charge through donations from Society members. Anyone may read the forums, but to post you must create a free account.

Porchetta


ianeccleston

Recommended Posts

I've seen a couple of recipes for 'mock porchetta' from Batali & Judy Rogers, but I'm curious if anyone has experience making the real thing. I turn 30 this year and am looking to cook some variation of whole pig.

1) Anyone in the Heartland know where to order a whole pig? Do you think it'd possible to get it deboned by the butcher? (Paulina Meat Market, et al)

2) Once procured, how do you cook the damn thing? I'd love to do it on the grill, but it will probably be too big, even if doing a sucking pig. Any advice for constructing a temporary outdoor pit/?

3) Got a good recipe?

Thanks,

Ian

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Get the February Vogue.

No, seriously, it contains Steingarten's report on the caja china (also in the NY Times and Saveur last month.)

You could order the pig from Niman Ranch, or you could ask them to put you in touch with one of their farmers (doesn't make much sense to ship it from Iowa to California, then back to you).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Paul Bertoll's new book may be worth checking out:

Cooking by Hand

He's an Italian chef in the SF Bay area (restaurant: Oliveto) that specializes in making home cured pork and meat products. According to review in Amazon there's a chapter called "The Whole Hog".

"Under the dusty almond trees, ... stalls were set up which sold banana liquor, rolls, blood puddings, chopped fried meat, meat pies, sausage, yucca breads, crullers, buns, corn breads, puff pastes, longanizas, tripes, coconut nougats, rum toddies, along with all sorts of trifles, gewgaws, trinkets, and knickknacks, and cockfights and lottery tickets."

-- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1962 "Big Mama's Funeral"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Paul Bertoll's new book may be worth checking out:

Cooking by Hand

He's an Italian chef in the SF Bay area (restaurant: Oliveto) that specializes in making home cured pork and meat products. According to review in Amazon there's a chapter called "The Whole Hog".

I just got it yesterday -- the Whole Hog section is more about using every piece of the pig than cooking a whole one. (Every year the restaurant has whole hog week, featuring trotters, ears, etc.)

Interesting that you bring this up, because Steingarten got his pig from Bertolli.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

OK, I gotta say it: Pig Candy.

I'd like to say that I'm willing to buy a $200 box to cook whole pigs in for a one-time event, but I'm not. It sounded fantastic though - I wish I could rent one out in Chicago.

Thanks for the Niman tip - I emailed them about getting a whole suckling pig.

Ian

Link to comment
Share on other sites

OK, I gotta say it: Pig Candy.

I'd like to say that I'm willing to buy a $200 box to cook whole pigs in for a one-time event, but I'm not. It sounded fantastic though - I wish I could rent one out in Chicago.

I saw a television show recently about a Cuban family in Miami who had a pig roast every year. They built a similar contraption out of cinder blocks and foil.

Hey, I managed to find a website with the very same guys on it! And it has instructions on building the pit!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Man, those 3 Cubans are for real! I very may well try to do it the way they do it. The pit is a great idea, and so is butterflying the pig. I bet that pig is a bit dry though - I thought that stuffing it with some nice fatty bits like in Porchetta would give the juiciest, tastiest pig candy.

I unfortunately don't own the Craft cookbook. Generally, how does he do it? I might have to go over to Border's and do a little browsing and see if the book is worth buying...

Ian

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Heard very good things about the pigs from Gunthorpe Farms in Indiana. They have a website pig farm

I know they also do suckling pigs. I have not tried them myself, but a couple of people told me that they are very good. They are grass-fed, organic pigs. If your interested in pricing, PM me.

Wish I could help you with the cooking vessel, You could always go suckling, and fit it on a weber?!

Patrick Sheerin

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Funny you should ask, Ian. I just roasted a porchetta at New Year's, and detailed everything in my blog (rovinggastronome.blogspot.com--you'll have to go back to the January archive).

The short version: we ordered a pig from a butcher, all porchetta-d, stuffed, trussed and on a wooden spit. Cost $150 for probably 25-30 pounds of meat (I'm in NYC, hence the price--but we got it from a restaurant purveyor, so maybe it was actually cheap?). Couldn't have done it on a Weber, because the pig was stretched out too long (see links to pics on my blog). We used a 50-gallon drum cut in half, and propped the spit up on cinder blocks.

The result was good, but not fantastic--the meat was like a good loin roast, not one of those shreddable slow-cooked numbers, and nothing approaching "pig candy." Next time, I think I'd do it more covered (we just did it open-air, over mesquite), or rig up the drums we have to do sort of a caja china treatment. Too bad that NY Times story didn't come out a couple of weeks sooner...

Zora O’Neill aka "Zora"

Roving Gastronome

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, I'm thinking of going smaller-scale and doing a Porchetta on my Weber w/ a suckling pig. How big are sucklings, anyway? My Weber is 22" - would a boned suckling pig fit in there?

Ian

I like them in the 12 to 14 lb range.I knew I souldn't have started to read this tread. :laugh:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Zora, any tips on getting the pork juicier? Maybe I'll brine or salt the pig a day before stuffing it...

BTW - I talked to the folks at Niman ranch - they don't do suckling pigs. Neither does the Paulina Meat Market, but they gave me a contact in greektown...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We didn't do any brining or salting because we picked it up from the butcher the day of. In the future, though, I think I'd get a smaller pig and do all the treatment myself so that I could brine it--a lot of the problems of spit-roasting are the same as oven-roasting. And when it's smaller, I don't think you necessarily even have to debone it.

Before we ordered the porchetta from the resto butcher, we asked at a few of the neighborhood butchers, but no one was willing to bone a pig for us. It was Xmas/New Year's and everybody in the nabe is eating meat like there's no tomorrow, so I don't think the butchers had time to fiddle with a pig.

Where are you located? Have you looked into Mexican or Greek butchers?

Zora O’Neill aka "Zora"

Roving Gastronome

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I did a suckling pig last weekend. Here's How:

First I flattened it, just like you would do with a quail or a chicken: Lean on the back and make it flat. Then it was seasoned with thyme, salt and pepper, rubbed with a mixture of butter and olive oil. I made slots along the tenderloins and in the shoulders and hams where I lodged halved cloves of garlic. It was roasted it at 500 degrees for about half an hour on a rack in a huge roasting pan. Then dropped the temperature to 300 degrees and poured a bottle of Spanish white wine into the pan. When three hours had passed, I turned on the broiler, crisped up the skin for ten or fifteen minutes. Let it rest for half an hour or more, carved it up and served it.

Brining isn't necessary. Also, compared to a normal roast, it was seasoned very lightly. The pig itself has a lovely flavour so there is no need to have an herb or a spice playing an upper hand. The mandate is to leave it alone as much as possible.

Good luck.

You shouldn't eat grouse and woodcock, venison, a quail and dove pate, abalone and oysters, caviar, calf sweetbreads, kidneys, liver, and ducks all during the same week with several cases of wine. That's a health tip.

Jim Harrison from "Off to the Side"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 5 years later...

*Major bump*

Funny - five years later and I'm considering the same task. I ended up roasting a whole big beast, not a suckling in 2004, BTW. This year, a smaller party, a smaller pig. And yet the search for a good recipe for porchetta of suckling pig. I found the butcher, but not the technique for a home oven. Any ideas?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...