Porkepdo!

Somehow we ended up with a slaughtered piglet that had nowhere to go, so we decided that the best thing to was to build a small pit and have an impromptu pig roast, not such a bad thing, if you ask me. I wanted to do this one a little different from the roast we had in the early spring, and because this was a much smaller pig, I decided to go it Porchetta style. This meant deboning the  whole animal while leaving it in one piece and the skin intact. I’ve done this many times before in my last life as a rocking New York City chef. 

Its quite a fun process, deboning a whole animal, especially cause this one was going to keep it’s head! I start by laying the piglet on its back and running a knife, very gently as you don’t want to pierce the skin anywhere, along both sides of the rib cage, slowly exposing the ribs and then the belly. (wow, thats sounds kinda naughty....) This gets pretty delicate because at some points there is only about a quarter inch of meat between the bone and the skin. I keep the knife pressed against the bone and follow the rib cage till I get to the spine. The tricky part is the hip bone, I separate the ball and sock joint, and then work my way around the hip bone. Once this is all free, I can then remove the whole ribcage/spine by pulling up at the neck and cutting along the top of the spine, being very careful to pot cut the skin. 

One this whole piece is removed, it gets pretty easy, just boning out the two shoulders and the two legs. After this is done, you have a whole hog that has been deboned from the inside out. I then cut off about half the hams, both for infill purposes and for to square off the end. I butterfly the ham meat that I removed and lay it on the area of the belly that is the thinest so that every slice has a good meat to skin to fat ratio. I then season the whole inside with salt and pepper and then add a thin layer of pork sausage, to add fat and flavor. The real excitement comes when I roll the whole thing back up into a tube and presto, we have Porkpedo!! 

We cooked this beats on a small cinder block pit that I built heated with charcoal and pieces of apple and oat wood. I kept the fire pretty low and let the Porkpedo cook for about 10 hours, basting it for the last few hours with garlic, maple syrup, mustard and vinegar wash. The result was epic!! Perfect tender meat encased in a shatter crisp skin...

My brother and my buddy Andy came up just for this and we had a good group of farm friend and volunteers to help it it. I was a truly fabulous meal and something we will be doing again, maybe for the October party!