A Pork Roast Surprise!
Maybe in your browsing through the meat case you’ve noticed a roast for sale dressed with Porketta seasoning. Or maybe you’ve noticed Porketta seasoning being sold for your own use. ‘Porketta, what’s that taste like?’, you say to yourself as you grab some other candidate for dinner.
Well, first I can highly recommend this seasoning. It does work best on a roast, in my opinion. You can use it on any pork you’d like of course, but I prefer it on a larger piece of meat.
The flavor is mild and complex. It compliments the pork and the fat very well. I normally use it on a Pork roast from the shoulder or more specifically the Boston Butt. This portion of the shoulder has a fairly high fat content and good flavor. The roast will cook down to be quite tender. Because of the fat content it is very forgiving as far as moisture content goes. It is even a good piece for the BBQ, believe it or not. The key is to make sure it is done. It needs to get to 170 degrees all the way through. When your thermometer gets to about 160 or a little more take it off the flame or move it to a place to set for 10 to 15 minutes so it will finish cooking, unless your like me and like the outside pretty well done. I actually like to test it by checking how the meat pulls apart. As it falls apart easily and pulls away from the bone (if there is one) easily it is perfect for me. This will be after it has reached the safe targeted temperature but you should use a thermometer to be sure. As a starting point you can figure the time will run about 20 minutes per pound.
As far as adding the spice, if you are doing it yourself, you can lay it on pretty thick. It does not have a high salt content, unlike many BBQ rubs on the market.
If you’ve ever wondered about trying one of these, dig in and give it a try. Whether you cook it on the BBQ or in the oven it will melt in you mouth.
Brutus
November 11th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
Surprise, it’ s me. I actually cook quite a bit (read, just sold off 200 cookbooks because i decided having 800 of them was simply too many). I’ll give porketta a try.
November 11th, 2007 at 5:59 pm
Hi Jennifer, glad you stopped by. I can say with all humility that most people who cook probably know more than I, but if I can throw a new recipe idea out there I’ve run across, why not.
I agree 800 cookbooks is too much reading and not enough eating.
The brand of Porketta seasoning I use is Dave Vecchi. It’s on my blogroll and is a product of Oregon. I’m going to do a post about a few of the good spice companies I’ve run across here shortly. There are probably more good places to get any given spice than I could list but I thought I would let you know the one I use.
Brutus