welcome friends we are going to be cooking today outside in the wood-fired
clay brick oven and we're going to make a porchetta or a version of a porchetta
and I say a version because you know traditionally this is made with a very
large or a full pork belly or an even larger portion of the pig it's just two
of us I only need a small little bit a little roast something for a weeknight
with some leftover for sandwiches later so I'm gonna play around with a couple
of ideas and we're gonna see how it turns out so I've got a selection of
herbs and spices in front of me I've got sage so we're just gonna rip off a few
sage leaves a little bit of rosemary I'm not a huge fan of rosemary so I don't
use quite as much as everybody else does so I'm just gonna strip off some leaves
of rosemary and some thyme and if the time is really tender you can put the
stems in as well as the leaves you don't want the woody parts though so I've
already been out to the wood-burning stove I've got it started I've got a
fire going a really low fire because we don't want a whole lot of heat we just
want it around 325 to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and I say around because it
is a live fire you do have to play with it in order to get the temperature right
okay so I've got a nice pile of fresh herbs and I've got some garlic here and
I'm just gonna smash that garlic down a little bit and I'm gonna put it all in a
pile and just give it a rough chop before I put it into the mortar and
pestle okay this goes into the mortar and pestle that's gonna squirt in a
little bit of olive oil throw in some hot red pepper flakes fennel black
pepper and some salt there's gonna crush that around
next I'm going to zest in one lemon and
one orange okay now on to the pork belly I've got a fairly small pork belly and I
have already taken the skin off of it so I've peeled the skin off and we're gonna
tie that back on later and then I have opened up the pork belly so I can get
both maximum area for the flavorings and for a little bit of ground pork that I
have here that I'm going to put in the middle so on go the flavorings you just
kind of rub that in get it everywhere okay
so I've also gotten a little bit of ground pork here and I like to put
ground pork in the middle instead of pork loin just because I think the extra
fat from the ground pork makes the whole thing juicier moister more flavorful
when it comes out of the oven so I just mix a little bit of the flavoring
mixture into the ground pork and then press the ground pork into the belly
okay all the pork is in and now you just start to roll it up roll it as tightly
as you can
and then bring the skin over put the skin down and then stretch the skin
around the roast and you might have trouble getting the skin to stretch all
the way around and that's one of the problems with doing a smaller piece of
pork belly you can't always get it to wrap up nicely so do your best
it'll be okay now the next thing is to tie it together so that it will stay
really nice in the oven it will keep its shape and you just need some butcher
twine I know there are specific butcher knots to do this but you know just make
it happen
okay and we'll put that on a rack on a tray with the full uninterrupted skin
side up and we'll take that out to the oven okay so I've got a fairly low fire
going I've put a little rack inside the oven and I pushed the fire back to one
corner I'm gonna stick the porchetta in there and a foot temperature probe into
it just so that I know when it's cooked and I'll hook that up to this thermo
Works dot which is luck see in a little while so Glenn the backyard smells
pretty good what have you been doing today it does smell pretty good this is
the first porchetta of the new wood-fired oven yes I see we're still
learning the temperature still learning temperature control okay it is hard to
learn so the the skin is a little bit charred crispy Cajun that's not very
Cajun no um crispy I can hear the crunchy crispy and crunchy if the
temperature been a little bit lower when I first put it in we would have been
fine so temperature the overall or temperature like cuz you've still had
flames going in the back note the temperature of the dome was a little bit
too high okay um I could have saved it if I had realized quickly enough I could
have put tin foil over it which would have saved us a little bit but let's see
let's cut her open okay I'm serrated knife is pretty much the only way to get
through looks pretty good inside does that look so that looks pretty good
how is the rolling rolling wasn't too bad you know it's um the rolling is the
easiest part I think oh okay okay I know you brought a fork but I'm my fingers
are already I might stick with the fork that looks great though
that's all right it's kind of big but I'll commit so its moist and flavorful
and I've had pork at a few times in the past where it's really dry through the
center I don't quite got to the middle but that I can't imagine it's gonna dry
out well it's fabulous and and so I used I used the ground I used ground pork
some people put a pork loin through the middle and there's no fat in that and so
it would be it would be very dry but this is I really like this this be great
on supposed to be great for dinner tonight but it'd be great on a sandwich
tomorrow you're having a sandwich sounds just like you an emergency sandwiches
situation but I have an emergency sandwich so this is just sort of a base
recipe for flavors so you sort of get a little bit of a smoky note you don't
taste any of the burnt because that's just on the outside and and that skin on
the inside has protected the skin on the outside it's protected the inside from
drying out as well yes so if you don't have a wood oven you can do this on your
barbecue certainly on your barbecue yeah and you could do it in your home oven
but that smoky flavor throughout is add something to it really does the outside
cooking the outside yeah I think this is gonna go great with the asparagus fresh
asparagus from the garden it's gonna be fantastic that dinner part of spring
thanks for stopping by see you again soon take care
you