This version steps slightly away from the traditional recipes and adds fruit and pine nuts to the traditional herbs. It’s then cooked on the Big Green Egg to achieve a succulent mouth watering and visually stunning dish.
The pork belly needs to be top quality and the skin dry. Ask your butcher to score the skin lengthways along the joint so that when it’s rolled the cuts allow slices of the porchetta to be cut easily. Avoid pre packed pork as you’ll find it almost impossible to get the skin to crackle as it will be too moist.
Ingredients
- 2kg pork belly with the ribs removed, scored down the joint’s skin
- 100g raisins
- 100g dried apricots
- 75g pine nuts
- 5-10 sage leaves, chopped coarsely
- 1/2 bunch flat leaf parsley, chopped coarsely
- 200g spiced sausage meat or 4 sausages with the skins removed
- 4 cloves of garlic, chopped coarsely
- Olive oil
- Maldon salt
- 1 tsp black pepper, coarsely ground
Method
- Unpack your pork belly and if possible leave uncovered in your fridge overnight, skin side up to dry a little.
- Place your pork belly skin side down onto a chopping board.
- Place your sausage meat all the way down the long side of your joint.
- Sprinkle on the raisins, apricots, pine nuts, sage, parsley, black pepper and garlic making sure they cover the full width of the belly.
- Roll your pork belly, normally the edges will meet when you roll it tightly.
- Tie your rolled pork belly firmly, any knot will do as long as it is kept tightly rolled, even a granny knot works. You might want to get some help just to hold the porchetta nice and tight.
If you are cooking without a rotisserie
- Light your Big Green Egg and get it to a cooking temperature of 250C using an indirect setup (plate setter in with the feet up and the stainless steel grid on top).
- Place your porchetta onto a V-Rack in a drip pan. Fill the drip pan with 750ml of water, keeping the level below that of the meat.
- Rub the skin of the porchetta with a generous amount of olive oil and then with lots of Maldon sea salt. This will help it form great crackling.
- Place into your Big Green Egg remembering to burp it. This initial hot blast at 250C will help crackle the skin.
- After 15 minutes of cooking adjust the vents to lower the temperature to around 180C.
- Cook your porchetta for a further 4 hours checking every hour or so whether the water in the drip pan needs adding to, just don’t let it boil dry!
- When your porchetta is golden take off and rest for a minimum of 30 minutes covered in foil.
- Mix a tablespoon or two of cornflour with water to form a paste before adding to the juices in the drip pan. Add some white wine if you like and some liquid vegetable stock. This will make a fantastic gravy. Heat the pan over a hob to cook and thicken.
If you are cooking with a rotisserie (total cook time around 5 hours)
- Light your Egg and set it to 140°C with your rotisserie setup.
- Push your rotisserie rod through the centre of you porchetta and secure.
- Place on to the Egg and cook until the internal temperature is about 88°C. This took about 4.5 hours for me. I measure this with a Meater+.
- Now turn up your Egg to 220°C and cook for a further 20-30 minutes. During this period your pork skin will start to crackle. Watch it every 5 or so mins as it will go from crackled to burnt very quickly.
Notes
Slice the porchetta into 1.5cm thick slices making sure you remove all the string you used to tie up the joint.
Porchetta is also beautiful served in a crusty roll or some ciabatta. A little pesto gives it a real lift or some salsa verde. Add a little rocket and a drizzle of olive oil. Heaven in a bun. I have even refried my porchetta slices.
Feel free to experiment with different combinations of herbs and fruit to stuff your porchetta.
Hi, when cooking with a rotisserie is still done indirect or do you just have the meat spinning over the coals? Thanks (p.s love your site)
I cook direct over the coals.
Cooking this today, pork belly is just chilling in the fridge now!
Let us know how you get on.
Would you keep the lid closed whilst this is cooking?
Yes, you always keep the lid closed to be in control of the temperature. If you had the lid open, the charcoal would get hotter and hotter, and your porchetta would burn.
How long on the roetisserie?
I do it for 4.5 hours as I stated in the recipe. If you go for 160°C it might take 3 hours.
Thanks! Sorry I didn’t see the rotisserie instructions at the end! Doing it tomorrow so will let you k is how I get on…
Hi Nick, would you put oil and salt on the rotisserie version of cooking too? Cheers Simon
Yes I do.
Hi Nic, cooking Porchetta on my new Letzq on Sunday will send you some pics of how the Letzq fits on the Charles-Griller Akorn