Pork Roast with Crispy Crackling

5
03:30

This is a recipe for slow-cooked pork roast – just like sous vide but without the plastic and vacuum machine. This recipe yields a perfectly juicy and well-seasoned roast with crispy crackling – and it is all made in one pot.

Ingredients

Brine

1 l Water

1 pcs. Onion

1 pcs. Garlic cloves

2 tbsp. Salt

4 pcs. Bay leaf

1 tbsp. Thyme

10 pcs. Peppercorns, whole

4 pcs. Whole cloves

The roast

1 kg Pork loin, rind on

Oil, for frying

Steps

1
Prepare the brine

Pour the water into a casserole.

Coarsely chop the onion and crush the garlic (the peel can be left on).

Add the onion, garlic, salt and spices to the water. Set the temperature to 120 °C until it comes to a boil.

Reduce to 105ºC and cook for five minutes to ensure that the onion and garlic are cooked.

2
Cook the meat at low temperature - sous vide technique

Add the pork loin to the boiling water. If the meat is not completely submerged, then add more water until the meat is fully covered.

Lower the temperature to 60 °C. Leave the meat to cook for 3 hours.

3
Prepare the roast for frying

Remove the roast from the brine. Rinse it under the cold tap to clean it of herbs, onion, etc.

Scor the rind. Make sure you only just cut down to the meat, but that you do not cut into it.

Cut a slit under the rind from both sides, so they can lie flat in the bottom of the pan. Don’t cut them completely of the roast, just enough so they can lie flat against the bottom of the pot.

Clean and dry the pot so it can be used for frying.

4
Sear the roast

Add oil to the pot. The bottom of the pan should be covered.

Heat the pot to 200 °C. Place the roast rind side down, and fry for about 5 minutes. Turn and cook on the meat side for 2-3 minutes.

Notes

You can also roast the rinds at 180°C instead of 200°C, but then they need a little more time. However, this might result in crispier rinds.

You can also choose to grill the roast briefly in the oven, rather than in the pan. This also works well for a crispy crackling. Alternatively, you can leave the roast to cool for half an hour and then put it in a convection oven at 200 – 250 °C. Set your oven as high as it goes. The core temperature of the meat must not exceed 60 °C. Therefore, it needs to cool down before roasting it this way, as it will be reheated while you are cooking the rind.

The brine leftover from cooking the roast can be used in a sauce, but it doesn’t have much flavour. Most of the flavour has stayed in the roast. The salt and herbs are fine addition to another sauce, so you can save the stock for a later use.

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