Nicholas Gavin

Joule® Turbo Sous Vide

Digital scale

Butcher’s twine

1-gallon Ziplock-style freezer bag(s)

1/4 Sheet pan(s)

Baking/Cooling rack(s)

Breville Joule® Oven Air Fryer Pro

Fine-mesh strainer

2-quart Saucepan

Silicone spatula

Pork belly

Kosher salt

Fennel seeds

Black pepper

Rosemary

Garlic clove(s)

Extra-virgin olive oil

Thyme

Flake sea salt

The right cut of pork belly: The dimensions and distribution of fat and muscle in any pork belly depends on the breed and the way it has been processed. Typically, there will be more muscle on either end of the belly, and there will be less muscle in the middle. For this preparation, we recommend using a 6- to 7-inch section of belly cut from either the chuck (aka shoulder) or sirloin (aka ham) end. We also recommend seeking out high-quality, non-commodity pork. It&#39;s worth it!


Skin-off pork belly for sous vide porchetta: The biggest trap when streamlining a porchetta recipe is devising a method that produces crispy skin. The key to crackling-crisp skin on a pork roast is getting the skin dry. (For our <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/ultimate-roast-porchetta">Ultimate Roast Porchetta</a>, we call for air-drying skin-on belly for at least 5 days in the fridge—or asking your butcher to do it for you.) With sous vide, you’re doing the exact opposite—placing skin in a sealed, warm, and wet environment for 24 hours gets it about as wet as is possible, which makes it nearly impossible to get the skin crispy. That’s not to say we didn’t try! We did our best during development, but our best efforts resulted in hard, almost inedible skin encasing perfectly cooked and seasoned meat—a waste. With skin-off belly, we’re able to crisp up the fat cap, and it works as a worthy stand-in for skin on classic porchetta.

Before we begin

Feel like you’re up for more of a challenge? Why don’t you give our <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/ultimate-roast-porchetta">Ultimate Roast Porchetta</a> a try? It’s harder to pull off, sure, and it requires some extra effort and planning, but we’ll walk you through every step of the way, and you’ll get one of the best pork roasts in the world as your reward.

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Ultimate Roast Porchetta

Choose your porchetta fighter

Heat sous vide water bath to desired temperature using our doneness guide.

[f 162] for 24 hours: Tender and succulent (our favorite).

[f 176] for 8 hours: Still tender, slightly less juicy, leaner due to more rendered fat.

Heat sous vide bath

Weigh pork belly; if weight is far off 1.6 kg, use scaling tool to adjust weight in the master ingredient list to scale the ingredients for seasoning mixture, or scale seasoning mixture using baker’s percentages provided above. Set pork belly aside.

In a small bowl, stir together salt, ground fennel, black pepper, and ground dried rosemary until well combined. Set aside.

Make seasoning mixture

We tried several different herb and spice mixtures for seasoning the porchetta. Seasoning mixtures with lots of fresh herbs tasted great, but we weren’t happy with the color the fresh herbs took on after the extended cook, so we ended up using dried herbs. We did love the flavor that fresh herbs provide, so instead of including fresh herbs in the seasoning mixture, we add sprigs of thyme and rosemary to the sous vide bag.

Fennel is a characteristic seasoning used in many versions of porchetta, particularly in the central Italian region of Umbria, where wild fennel is used. Wild fennel is not a common ingredient in the U.S., but we ran porchetta trials using both fennel seeds and fennel pollen. Both tasted great, and while we loved fennel pollen, we didn’t feel the flavor was appreciably superior to justify calling for a much more expensive ingredient when fennel seeds worked so well. If you don&#39;t mind the expense, or you’ve dried fennel pollen yourself and are itching to use it, you can use it as a direct substitute for the fennel seeds.

Porchetta seasonings

Place pork belly on work surface, fat cap-side (skin-side) down, with long ends running parallel to counter edge, and with short end that has the most meat closest to your dominant hand. Using a sharp knife, starting from short end closest to you, butterfly belly by making long, even knife strokes parallel to work surface, opening the belly like a book, and stopping just short of opposite end, taking care not to slice belly in half completely.

Butterfly pork belly

Using your hands, spread garlic purée evenly over surface of butterflied belly. Sprinkle seasoning mixture evenly over belly. 

Starting from short end closest to your non-dominant hand, roll belly back up to form a tight cylinder, rolling toward the end where you started to butterfly the belly. 

Measure and cut six 24-inch lengths of butcher’s twine. Position rolled belly, seam-side up, on the cutting board. Slide lengths of twine under belly, spacing them 1 inch apart. Starting from center and working outwards, tie and knot each length of twine tightly around pork belly to create a cylindrical roast. When forming the knot, loop ends of twine around each other 3 times before pulling taut and tying off knot. Once roast is fully trussed, trim away excess twine from each knot. Watch the video to see the process in detail.

Season, roll, and tie porchetta

Place porchetta in a 1-gallon ziplock-style freezer bag or vacuum-seal bag, with seam facing the opening of the bag. Add olive oil, thyme, and rosemary to the bag, placing herb sprigs on seam side of porchetta. Seal bag using water displacement method or vacuum sealer.

Lower bag into sous vide bath until porchetta is fully submerged, and clip to side of water bath container. Because of the amount of fat in the belly, it will have a tendency to float once the fat begins to render. Weigh the pork down with a wire rack or pair of tongs. Cover sous vide bath.

Cook, following our timing guide for porchetta doneness.

[f 162] for 24 hours: Tender and succulent (our favorite).

[f 176] for 8 hours: Still tender, slightly less juicy, leaner due to more rendered fat.

Once cooked, porchetta can be held in sous vide bath for up to 4 hours if cooked at [f 162] for 24 hours (28 hours total) or up to 2 hours if cooked at [f 176] for 8 hours (10 hours total) without any loss in quality.

Cook porchetta sous vide

For long cooking times, it’s important to cover your sous vide bath container to reduce evaporation. You can use a lid, a cut-up yoga mat, or some high-quality plastic wrap to cover the container.

Cover for long cooking times

Adjust oven rack to middle position and preheat oven to [f 400] on air fry mode or high fan if using a convection oven, or [f 425] if using a conventional oven.

Set a wire rack in a sheet pan and line rack with paper towels. 

Remove porchetta from bag and transfer to prepared sheet pan. If you want to make the optional agrodolce, strain juices from bag through a fine-mesh strainer into a 2-quart saucepan; set aside. Pat porchetta thoroughly dry with paper towels, and position it, seam-side down, on rack. 

Roast until porchetta is golden brown on top and sides, 25 to 30 minutes, rotating sheet pan halfway through to ensure even browning.

Transfer sheet pan to a heatproof surface and let porchetta rest for 15 minutes. 

NOTE: If roasting porchetta in a conventional oven, you may need to extend cook time by 5 to 10 minutes.

Roast porchetta to crisp fat

While porchetta is roasting, make agrodolce if desired. Using a small ladle or spoon, skim away rendered fat on surface of reserved strained bag juices; discard fat.

Add vinegar and honey to saucepan and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Cook, stirring and scraping bottom and sides of saucepan frequently with a flexible spatula to prevent scorching, until mixture is reduced to and thickened to a syrupy consistency, about 10 minutes. Set aside.

Apple cider vinegar

Honey

Make agrodolce (optional)

While porchetta is resting, make fennel salad if desired. In a medium bowl, combine fennel, parsley, and some of the reserved fennel fronds. Drizzle lightly with olive oil, lemon juice, lemon zest, and salt to taste. Toss to combine.

Fennel

Flat-leaf parsley

Lemon juice

Lemon zest

Make fennel salad (optional)

Once rested, transfer porchetta to a cutting board. Remove butcher’s twine and slice into 1/4-inch-thick pieces. Traditionally, porchetta is roughly chopped rather than sliced like a roast, but carve it however you like. Season with flake sea salt and pepper to taste. Serve, passing fennel salad and agrodolce at the table (if you made them).

Carve and serve

Porchetta can be cooked sous vide through Step 5, rapidly chilled in an ice bath, and refrigerated in its bag for up to 5 days. Reheat in a [f 156] sous vide bath for 3 hours before proceeding to Step 6. 

Agrodolce can be refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 1 week.

Make-ahead and storage

Porchetta—a whole boned out pig, seasoned, and roasted until the skin is crisp and the meat is meltingly tender and juicy—is almost impossible to get right at home. We say almost impossible because it can be done, it’s just a project. We enlisted the help of master butcher Kevin Smith to show how it’s done with our <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/ultimate-roast-porchetta">Ultimate Roast Porchetta</a>, replete with tips and detailed butchery demos so you can confidently execute it yourself.But we also wanted to develop a porchetta recipe that’s more approachable and forgiving. Unlike our roast porchetta, this sous vide version doesn’t require a special order cut of pork from a craft butcher, there’s no five-day minimum waiting period to air-dry pork skin, and you don’t need an advanced degree in butchery or knot-tying. This is delicious, easy, hands-off porchetta that you can start tonight with a piece of pork belly from the grocery store and have it on the table for an epic dinner tomorrow, without ever breaking a sweat. It gets you most of the payoff of great porchetta—succulent, juicy, well-seasoned pork—with a fraction of the effort.

Easy Sous Vide Porchetta