Do you know about porchetta?

You can order our market-made porchetta from right now through Wednesday, 10/9. We'll order Niman Ranch pork the next day, based on how many orders we get. We'll make it fresh the week of 10/21, and you'll pick it up at the store of your choice starting Friday, 10/25.
Because a small portion of porchetta does not turn out well, there is a four-pound minimum when ordering porchetta — we want yours to turn out beautifully, and the leftovers are pretty dang spectacular.

Market-Made Porchetta
$15.99/lb

BY BILL ST. JOHN

What is porchetta anyway?

The Italian recipe "porchetta" means "a small roast of pork." In ancient Rome it was, to jumble the words a bit, "a roast of small pork," a whole roast suckling pig, seasoned any number of ways.

Nowadays, kitchens of any sort rarely see a suckling pig. By and large, today's porchetta is a large, rolled-up, highly-seasoned-then-roasted mass of pork — a big square of belly, a butterflied shoulder, sometimes either, surrounding a core of loin.

It’s not easy to prepare

At base, then, porchetta is a simple preparation, though not simple to prepare. The barriers are several: a cut of pork difficult to obtain; the day or two needed to fully cook it; and finding enough people to eat it. A small porchetta is close to a contradiction in terms.

To prepare porchetta, cooks must make a paste of olive oil (or lard) mashed with garlic, much ground black pepper and salt and a great deal of aromatic herbing (rosemary or thyme or both). Some cooks add chili flakes. Most agree that porchetta ought whisper of anise and therefore add fennel seed and, for the profligate, fennel pollen, not easy to come by.

We prepare it, you cook it

Marczyk Fine Foods's porchetta recipe is our secret, but we can boast that it is traditionally multi-layered in flavors and scents and tastes. Better, we do the preparation and leave the cooking to you, if you choose. And, best of all, our porchetta's bed is Niman Ranch pork — hog like no other.

Because it contains no bones and is the same configuration of meat, fat, skin and flavorings along its entire length, a finished porchetta makes for an equitable distribution of awesomeness. As an everyday food, much loved on the streets of Rome or in outdoor weekend markets throughout Italy, porchetta finds itself tucked into the slices of a crusty ciabatta roll or other bread, often nestled up against slices of pickled red onion or leaves of pungent greens such as arugula or basil.

It is never without, however, some of its crackling skin, crisp enough to cut your lip. Those cracklings have punctuated its delicious story for centuries.