Kevin Smith is a master butcher, chef, and co-owner of Beast &amp; Cleaver, The Peasant, and Little Beast in Seattle. The Peasant has been named a top Seattle restaurant by The Seattle Met, Eater, and The Infatuation. Kevin was also nominated for Best Emerging Chef by the James Beard Foundation.

Kevin Smith

Real-deal porchetta is a beautiful thing: A whole, boned-out pig, seasoned with fennel and garlic, roasted until the skin is crispy and glassy and the meat is meltingly tender and juicy. Chop it all up for a delicious mix of lean and fatty meat with shards of crunchy skin, stuff it into a sandwich, and you’ve got one of the most iconic Italian street foods.Making it is obviously a chore—like whole hog barbecue, it’s almost exclusively done by professionals who sell to large crowds. And a lot of places choose to go with a more manageable preparation, using pork belly and loin to approximate the blend of meat, fat, and skin of a whole pig. But even the smaller preparation is extremely hard to do well, and it’s often done poorly.This recipe gets all the details right, but it’s a project. It requires a special order cut of high-quality pork, time to properly dry out the skin, some butchery technique, a sharp knife, and a two-stage cooking process. The skin: Nothing can ruin a beautifully roasted pork belly and loin like hard, impossibly chewy skin. There are two keys to getting pig skin super crispy in an oven: getting it dry and cooking it hot. The less moisture in the skin, the quicker it dries out and crisps in the oven, and using an intense blast of heat right at the start of the cooking process rapidly converts any remaining moisture into steam, puffing the skin up so as it dries it forms a glassy, crunchy crust.The meat: Porchetta should have assertively seasoned meat, and it should be luscious and juicy, both of which are challenging because it consists of a lean, whole muscle that’s technically “overcooked” and dry above [f 140] encased in a very fatty, tough cut that’s only palatable when thoroughly cooked through to a higher internal temperature of [f 170]. Our process is engineered to nail every one of these goals:-Using a specific cut of pork—skin-on belly with the loin attached—guarantees that the loin will nest neatly in the belly, with enough skin to completely the entire roast. 
-Air-drying the pork in the fridge dries out the skin and intensifies the flavor of the meat.
-Trimming the belly guarantees that you have enough skin to fully encase the roast.
-Butterflying the loin maximizes surface area for seasoning.
-Scoring the skin encourages fat rendering during roasting.
-A high-heat start puffs and crisps the skin, and a low-temperature roast gently brings the meat up to temperature.While it isn’t a whole pig, we get that it’s still a big endeavor, but there’s no arguing with the results. This is the ultimate roast porchetta.

Ultimate Roast Porchetta