Herby Roasted Pork Loin

Herby Roasted Pork Loin

Things that I love: pork.

Things that I really love: porchetta.

Things that Julie does not love: pork.

Things that Julie really does not love: porchetta.

However I am the cook so like, what I makes, is whats on the table. (Please note: I did not say “what I makes is what we eats” because as even the most casual observer of this blog will note that everyone in the house, including the fucking cat, is a picky little shit.) You’d think that I would learn by now to “stick in my lane”, but, like oh my fucking god that is so boring, so it’s like walking that fine line between spending forever making a dinner that no one will eat and making tacos every night. (Although that would be fine with me since tacos are a fantastic food, but when I say tacos I mean ground-beef American-style tacos. Every. Night.)

So. All that being said, guess what this post isn’t about?

Porchetta.

lol gotem.

It’s a butterflied, tied, rolled roast hunk of pork slathered with some very aromatic shit, thrown in the oven and roasted, so I guess like, idk, if we can call it au jus instead of just jus, we can call this a porchetta. Feel free to disagree. But I kind of don’t give a shit.

So I took a whole boneless pork loin and essentially cut it open so it would roll out flat. This way I could keep the fat cap on top. After I rolled it open I cut some shallow cross-hatches into it, aggressively seasoned it with salt and pepper (I mean AGGRESSIVELY like I fucking aSALTed that piece of meat). Then made a thick pesto-ish (yeah I know I’m fucking digging that hole even deeper) out of sage, parsley, thyme, lemon zest, lemon juice, garlic, salt, pepper, toasted fennel seed and olive oil. The trick here was to throw everything but the olive oil into the food processor and then using the little feed tube, fill that with olive oil so it drizzles in slowly and forms a proper emultion.

After slathering that shit all over the pork, I then rolled back into a cylinder and tied that fucker closed. You don’t want to pull the strings too tight or you’ll squeeze the filling right out, but tight enough so that it stays together. I then rubbed it down with the remaining filling, and seasoned the outside with salt and pepper. Put that in a 225º oven to roast on a rack set in a sheet pan with some water in the bottom to prevent the drippings from burning and smoking us all out until it was 135º in the center. Then took it out, cranked the oven to 500º convection, and browned the outside.

Let me tell you the smell of this thing cooking was fucking amazing. Like angels shitting on a fire.

The best part is when my son walked in and asked what I was cooking and then got really excited. And then he asked what we were having along side of it (roasted cauliflower and twice-baked potatoes) and asked since he doesn’t like those could I also make him rice.

I swear to fucking god.

(Oh and my daughter? She had toast and yogurt. I mean, why not right?)