This is something I've been wanting to do for a really long time and was only stymied by the lack of access to pork belly. I went to an asian market and they had pieces, but none were big enough. I spoke to them and asked if they could cut off a bigger piece for me to pick up Saturday and he said no problem.
I returned on Saturday and picked it up and then did a traditional porketta ( I considered the belly only way but I wanted to stuff it with pork loin). Chopped up a mess of garlic and used the last of the fresh herbs that we brought in last month, sage, rosemary, oregano, pepper and tons of roaseted fennel seed. rolled the loin, tied it with twine and it looked great I mean really great). Rubbed a mix of salt/baking soda ( 3:1) to get that " crispy skin" and wrapped it in saran wrap overnight in the fridge.
the next day I got out the weber silver, got the temps to 300 and put the maveric probe and put it into the center of the loin. Cooked it with a little apple wood to start. Everything was looking good. The pork loin temp was coming up way faster than I had hoped, the recipe said go to 160 then ANOTHER 2 hours ( they even mentioned that the final temp could be as high as 180, although they were doing belly only). I just could not let it go that long for fear of the loin being eraser tough so I pulled it at 170 into the kitchen then finished it off in the oven at 500 F for thirty minutes to really crisp up the skin.
If you have read this far, you can probably guess what happened, the skin got crispy ( although not uniformly next time I will rotate the loin in the super hot oven) but when I cut it the belly was not rendered out completely ( think warm but still undercooked bacon).
Uggh. My wife liked the loin but could not eat the belly portion, I soldiered through it ( as did our guests) but was super mad at myself.
Another thing is that I ( sit down this might be blasphemous) regret doing it on the grill. Had I done it in the over the roasting would have filled the whole house with that incredible smell of roasting pork/fennel/ garlic , all I got was the " crisping " smell which was accompanied by a lot of smoke ( again probably because the fat that should have been rendered in the kettle was still there and rendered out in the oven and smoked it up like cheech and chong)
I will probably try it again, simply as a way to try and save face. My wife, was super impresed with the look of the loin before I put it into the weber and said we might consider this for a holiday meal with people over. After she tasted it, its clear that no matter how pretty, that ship has likely sailed.
If you have gotten this far, if you ever have a recipe that says something that you think is not right, its probably better to trust them then try to fix it on the fly because in the end the consequences of user initiated changes fall right in your lap.
I returned on Saturday and picked it up and then did a traditional porketta ( I considered the belly only way but I wanted to stuff it with pork loin). Chopped up a mess of garlic and used the last of the fresh herbs that we brought in last month, sage, rosemary, oregano, pepper and tons of roaseted fennel seed. rolled the loin, tied it with twine and it looked great I mean really great). Rubbed a mix of salt/baking soda ( 3:1) to get that " crispy skin" and wrapped it in saran wrap overnight in the fridge.
the next day I got out the weber silver, got the temps to 300 and put the maveric probe and put it into the center of the loin. Cooked it with a little apple wood to start. Everything was looking good. The pork loin temp was coming up way faster than I had hoped, the recipe said go to 160 then ANOTHER 2 hours ( they even mentioned that the final temp could be as high as 180, although they were doing belly only). I just could not let it go that long for fear of the loin being eraser tough so I pulled it at 170 into the kitchen then finished it off in the oven at 500 F for thirty minutes to really crisp up the skin.
If you have read this far, you can probably guess what happened, the skin got crispy ( although not uniformly next time I will rotate the loin in the super hot oven) but when I cut it the belly was not rendered out completely ( think warm but still undercooked bacon).
Uggh. My wife liked the loin but could not eat the belly portion, I soldiered through it ( as did our guests) but was super mad at myself.
Another thing is that I ( sit down this might be blasphemous) regret doing it on the grill. Had I done it in the over the roasting would have filled the whole house with that incredible smell of roasting pork/fennel/ garlic , all I got was the " crisping " smell which was accompanied by a lot of smoke ( again probably because the fat that should have been rendered in the kettle was still there and rendered out in the oven and smoked it up like cheech and chong)
I will probably try it again, simply as a way to try and save face. My wife, was super impresed with the look of the loin before I put it into the weber and said we might consider this for a holiday meal with people over. After she tasted it, its clear that no matter how pretty, that ship has likely sailed.
If you have gotten this far, if you ever have a recipe that says something that you think is not right, its probably better to trust them then try to fix it on the fly because in the end the consequences of user initiated changes fall right in your lap.
).