The Secret to CRISPY Porchetta No One Talks About

The 1st time I ever tasted Porchetta in Rome, it kinda took my breath away. A whole pig lying on the counter, deboned, rolled up, sewn together, and roasted until the skin is crispy and the meat is juicy and tender. This is one of Rome’s most core and iconic foods, and while we won’t be getting a whole hog, we can still make a porchetta at home — much easier than you think — and it is the perfect centerpiece for your holiday dinner. This is Porchetta.

Today I’ll show you how to recreate this jaw-dropping Roman tradition in your own kitchen with simple techniques that deliver shattering crispy skin and unbelievably juicy meat. Whether it’s for Thanksgiving, Christmas, or any big gathering, this porchetta earns the spotlight.

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The first time I ever tasted porquetta in Rome, oh my god, incredible. It kind of took my breath away. A whole pig just laying on the counter, deboned, rolled up and sewn together, roasted until the skin is crispy and the meat is juicy and tender. I take one bite and suddenly I believe in heaven. This is one of Rome’s most core and iconic foods. And while we won’t be getting a whole pig, we can still make porquetta at home much easier than you think. And it happens to be the perfect centerpiece for your holiday dinner. This is porquetta. And of course, this recipe, like all of my recipes, is going to be in my holiday plan of attack. My go-to resource for all of you to make sure you enjoy the holidays as much as I do when it comes to food. Family, that’s another that I can’t help with that. And now, of course, since we’re not using a whole hog, this recipe is going to start with pork belly. And today’s Friday, I started this a couple days ago. So, this is prep day. The beauty of this recipe is we can prep this maybe 4 or 5 days before we actually need to cook this. And the longer you wait, the skin of the pork belly just gets drier, which means it just gets better once it’s cooked. First thing we got to do, toast a couple of herbs. Here, I’ve got some whole peppercorns and some whole fennel. Got a hot pan here. Just going to add in the pepper and then roughly an equal amount, maybe a little less of the fennel. Tablespoon, tablespoon and a half. Right away, if the pan’s hot enough, you’re going to start to smell an aromatic smell, all the flavors waking up. And we’re just going to get them into a mortar and pestle. And we’re just going to grind them up. Start by kind of cracking them. I kind of like to push from the side down towards the center. And then once they get cracked, you can just start to roll it around, grinding all the spices up as evenly as you can. You end up with about a tablespoon and a half of black pepper and fennel. Now, to those core flavors, we’re going to add some other wonderful flavors. First, we’ve got about 10 to 12 cloves of garlic. We’re going to get that in. And when it comes to salt, we’re going to base that as a percentage of weight to the amount of weight in pork belly that we have. The pork belly today that we’re going to be using is 5 lb. 1.6% of that, it’s going to be 38 g. So, remember the salt you add, you’re going to have to know the weight of the pork belly and then just do 1.6% of that. Ask the internet what that is in grams, but that’s what you’re going to want to do. Get that in there. Now, we’re going to add our pepper and fennel. Now, I’ve got some fresh rosemary. Maybe two to three stalks of rosemary to that. One bunch of sage, just the leaves. One bunch of parsley here. I’ve got some oregano leaves. So, I’m just going to pull a few stems of those. And we’ve got some fresh thyme. We’re just going to pull the leaves off of as well. To that, some lemon zest. Now, I’ve got these two small lemons, so I’m going to use two. Got a bigger one. I would just use one. And to get the maximum zest out of it, you kind of just start at the top, run it down, and you’re able to get most of the zest off the surface. And then finally, usually you add some chili flake in there, but I’m just going to go ahead and add about 3/4 of a tablespoon of Calabrian chili. Pulse it. Push down the sides. We just want to get it nice and fine so it evenly distributes into the pork. A should smell nice, bright, fresh, herbaceious. That’s what you’re looking for, an herb crumb. Now on to the pork belly. This is an example of a shape of pork belly not ideally suited to make porquetta. I’m friends with my butcher. I can special order things, make sure they set aside a specific piece. And they did that for me the first time. At some point you’re at the whim of what the producer and the animal offers you. And so I’ve got this. And now we’re going to make this work. But I do have others properly prepped which I’m going to show you the difference. Right. So now, first you’re going to look for anything from about a 6 to 8 lb pork belly with the skin on. And you want to ask the butcher, I need it rectangular, as square and rectangular as possible, rather than long and narrow like this. And you’re going to see why that’s important. So the first thing we want to do is use one of these things. This has little needles that stick out of it, and it acts to sort of poke holes in the skin. And those little micro holes, those are going to create an escape hatch for the fat to sort of pour out of and sort of base that skin and get it nice and tender. So, I’m just going to bash it. Now that that’s out of the way, I’m going to cut this in half so it’s easier to work with. So, if you got an 8 lb pork belly, you cut that into two 4 lb pieces. Ideally, you want a pork belly that looks more like this. Roughly the same width as length. So now here we are with one side. Now even though we poked it, there’s one thing we can do that’s kind of nice and it’s going to create a pattern and help the fat render. It’s just we’re going to do slices across, right? And we’re not going to do the other way. Otherwise, the string kind of gets stuck when we tie it. So now there’s two ways to do this. You can either roll it long and thin like this or short and thick like this. I’m going to show you both ways. Then of course a traditional porquetta is served a whole hog. The next level is a big pork belly and a pork loin and you stuff the pork loin in the pork belly. Those two things result in two big a pieces of meat I feel is respectable to serve on Christmas. The sole pork belly porquetta is the most approachable, the cheapest, the easiest to deal with roll up, tie up, and the most practical for at home for the Christmas dinner table. First way we’re going to show you, we’re going to do the thick but short porquetta. So, what that means is I’m going to lay it flat and then I’m going to start to butterfly open the long end. So, I’m going to get down with my knife, find like a little bit above the halfway point, and begin slicing and slowly peeling away until we open it like a book while still keeping it attached to the bottom of the pork. So, there you see how it’s going to work, right? We’re going to roll this up just like that. Before we do that, we got to stuff it. So, I’m going to go down with a little bit of the stuffing and I want to rub in a light layer across the entire thing. You don’t want too much, but there is all that salt in there that you want to make sure you kind of rub into the pork to season it. So now I’m just going to take where that flap is, very tightly roll it up. Just going to clean up the board. I I want to keep that skin really kind of clean and isolated. As you can see, this works. It’s just for a much smaller situation. Final step is to tie it. So, I’m going to go down into the middle. And very simply, I’m just going to do a basic knot, but I’m going to loop it around twice. So, it’s a triple knot. And I’m going to go down the side just to kind of get the knot away from the presentation top and I’m going to tighten it. Then, we’re going to tie another triple knot and then secure it. Then go to either side of it. And the more you do these closer to each other, the more even you’re going to get the porquetta at the end. I’m going to cut off the excess string. And there you’ve got beautiful little pork belly for I don’t know, four people, five people. We’re going to set that off to the side and then work on the other style. We’re going to go the long way. One other thing you got to ask the butcher for is a leaner piece of uh pork belly. And you could score it again, but we’re going to try this one without scoring it. So again, going to open it up like a book, being very careful you don’t cut through any of the sides of the pork. And as you can see, this is a much fattier side. So, I’m just going to trim off some of that fat. And then again, season that inside. And then just like we did before, going to roll it up. And when you do it this way, you’re not going to totally encase it in the skin. Some of the meat’s going to be at the bottom, but you’re going to get a much longer, thinner pork belly or porquetta. And then, same deal. Go towards the center first. Tight knot. Another triple knot. Continue tying up. Making sure that that skin is nice and tight. There’s no crimps in it. There’s no wrinkles. You see this one has more of like a shell around it. Doesn’t completely encase it. Still a nice porquetta. Just thin and long. Now, in their own right, these are perfectly fine porquettas. Can’t you see how like the the shape of the pork belly that we got lends itself to not the ideal shape and size of a borquetto? However, this is more my speed. Same sort of width you get when you roll it the long way. However, it’s just not as big of a piece of meat. Might not satisfy as many people. Same thing here. It’s a little thinner and longer, but this is still long and thicker. And as you can see, these were prepped 3 days ago. This skin is really beautiful and dry. It’s starting to get firm and nice. This is the secret. We need this skin to be as dry as possible. But this is the difference between getting the right piece of meat and getting maybe a less ideal piece of meat. And I’m going to get these into the fridge so they can dry out. These have been in the fridge for 3 days. And you could go ahead and cook them like this. I’m going to go for even more drying out of the skin. So, I’m going to let these go another couple days, which is nice. So, you don’t have to prep this Christmas Eve. You could literally prep this when is Christmas this year. Christmas is a Thursday. You can prep this on Sunday. Let it dry out in a fridge or your second fridge. Easy peasy. Your main course is basically taken care of. Now, today is Friday and these pork bellies, these porquettas, I prepped Monday. And as you can see, that skin has darkened. It’s browned a bit. That’s a sign of the skin being effectively dried out. And that’s exactly what you’re looking for. if it’s still a little white, which you can kind of see under the strings and you can kind of see underneath a little bit like that’s still dried out. But how dark this skin is before you cook it is really going to determine how well that skin crisps up. And now there’s two ways we can approach this and we’re going to show and try both. Now, outside of preparing it and the seasoning and all that, there’s two real tricks we really use to cook this properly, right? The first one was to dry that skin out. And we gave it the better part of a week. And you could probably let this go a day longer. The next thing we need to do is at some point during this cook, introduce this to high heat. And we’re going to do that two ways. First, the high heat in the beginning. The second one, the high heat at the end. We’re going to see which one yields the best result. So, I’m going to set this in the fridge and we’re going to get this guy into the oven. No oil, no nothing. We’ve got a 425°ree oven preheated and we’re going to roast it at that high temperature for about 30 45 minutes. Now, I know I said 425, but after further consideration, I think 450 is the right temp. And with convection, if your oven has it, that high heat is going to help render the fat under the skin. And once that fat starts rendering, it almost starts to fry that leathery skin into a puff. I got to add some water to the bottom of the pan just cuz the juice from the pork belly started dripping and burning. Just use a clean sheet tray when you start this cook so it doesn’t burn. Now, that skin that doesn’t puff up may stay crunchy, but just not as tender, more like glass. And all we’re really doing now is waiting for the skin to darken and puff to our desired taste. This route gives you control. You cook that skin to the puffy and crispiness that you want now, but once you lower the temperature, it’s not going to get much crispier or puffier. But rendering the fat is essential. If you’ve ever had pork skin that is kind of sticky in your mouth and your teeth, it’s because the skin is crispy, but the fat’s not fully rendered underneath it. Crisp skin will have that fat fully rendered till there’s almost a space between the meat and the skin. I’m going to take it out, but I could have left it in longer. And I’d recommend just doing this stage of the pork carefully. This is going to determine how amazing that skin’s going to be. Stick a thermometer into the center of the pork belly so we can monitor when it’s done. And then we can also get that second pork belly on. This is going to start slow and then we’re going to finish it on high heat to see the difference. And then we’re going to lower the heat down to 325. I’m just going to monitor this until it hits around 100. Anywhere really between like 170 and 200. You kind of don’t want this to be like falling apart, shreddable. You want it kind of like on the edge where it melts in your mouth, but there’s nothing really tough about it. I’ll probably shoot for around 185, 190. Now, what’s nice about starting a pork belly low and slow is it gives extra time and heat to further dry that skin out before crisping it up. We’re just going to double check the temp in the pork belly. Make sure I’m not in any fat pockets. Looks like we’re about 155. And I like to pull mine around 185, 190. Right now, I’m going to check the temp of the pork belly that’s been going low and slow and it’s at around 130. I think that’s the right amount of time to fully crisp up that skin. So, I’m going to turn the heat back up to 450. And I’m going to let that bigger pork belly stay in there while it heats up just to give it some a little extra crisp. And once I hit 185, I’m going to pull it out of the oven, remove the thermometer, and then place it into the other pork belly so I can monitor its temp when it’s in the oven. It’s about 190 in the center. Took out the thermometer, placed it into the other one that’s at about 140. We’re just going to try and crisp up that skin. One thing I will say though is I probably would have let this sit in the blasting heat in the beginning a little bit longer just because some parts down here are crisp but they’re like a little bit not like a cracker. So I really want you to allow in that first step that crackling to really make its way all the way down here. So we’re let this cool while the other porquetta finishes. Now, that second one’s been in that high heat now for a minute. And as you can see, we’re getting a lot of that bubbling and puffing in the skin, and it’s extraordinarily crispy. To me, this skin is looking better than the first one. It’s around 175, and we can let that go for another 10° before we pull it. And there’s our second porquetta. And if I may say so myself, incredibly gorgeous looking skin. slight puffing around the edges, so you get that puffy crisp, but it also is really just like glass. Now, this one is the one where the skin does not wrap all the way around, the skinnier, longer one, but because the skin doesn’t wrap around, it sort of ensures a maximum crispy. Whereas on this one, there’s a little still very crisp, but has some soft spots to it. Now, before tasting either of them, here are my thoughts about the techniques. I really like the first technique because I can then control the skin, whether I’m using the smaller one or the bigger one. I can then dial the skin into exact crispiness I want. Make sure it kind of creeps all the way down. Make sure we got some of this nice popping and bubbling that we got on this one that we didn’t so much get on this one, but we still got it blistering happening. And then you slow the heat down and just cook it to the temperature you want. And this is good to go. Also, if you’ve got guests coming, when you blast this at a higher heat, there’s lots of smoke. And this one is done last. So, if you don’t want your guests inhaling smoke from your oven, the hot and fast in the beginning and then slow is probably the way you want to go. What I like about this is it’s time in the oven to slowly render the fat and to allow that skin to get maximum dried. And then once you hit it, you get that blistering that’s really nice on the outside. Going to let that cool and then we’re going to make some sandwiches. It’s not what I’m going to serve on holiday, but I got to make porquetta sandwiches. I’m sorry. Now, you’re going to need a serrated knife. Trying to cut through this with a normal knife is just going to kind of harm it. Oh my god. Now, let’s analyze. Notice the rendered skin, puffed and crisp. And underneath there’s no real fat. Meat is tender. Let’s see how it tastes. Look at my fingers. Incredible. Not fall apart, but tender. We’ve got one. Let’s see the other. Now, let’s give the big one a taste. I think they’re both great. It’s salty, herby, fatty, tender. I will say the skin on the second one is better. If you tear off a little bit of the skin that isn’t fully rendered, a little tough and a little sticky. See, now this one, it’s a little bit more puffy. And here’s what we’re going to do. It just don’t get much better than that. If I’m cooking this again, surprisingly, I didn’t think I would choose this. I’m going with the long and the skinny one where the skin does not completely encase it. And I’m actually going to cook it the reverse way. I find the meat overall was more succulent. It was juicier. It was more tender. And of course, that skin is much better. I hope you enjoyed this. Again, if you like this recipe, it’s going to be in my holiday plan of attack. It’s got this and all of my recipes, about over 60 of them for Christmas and Thanksgiving. Everything from sides, desserts, manes, appetizers, you name it, it’s got it. And I’ve gotten so many reviews from people who said it has actually worked within their family and it’s now part of their tradition. Links going to be down in the description. That’s all that I have today. I’ll see you next time. Until then, take care of yourself and go feed yourself.