The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science

Traditional porchetta is made by butchering a hog so that
the boned-out loin is still attached to the boned-out belly.
The meat is then carefully salted and rubbed with a garlic,
herb, and spice mixture that features plenty of fennel and
black pepper, along with ingredients like crushed red
pepper, citrus zest, and rosemary, sage, and other piney-
scented herbs (you can, of course, vary the mixture to suit
your own tastes). By carefully rolling the two cuts up
together, you end up with a single perfectly cylindrical roast
with the fatty belly surrounding the lean loin, all covered in
a layer of skin.
As the rolled porchetta rests, the salt slowly penetrates
into the meat, dissolving the muscle protein myosin and
altering its structure so that it’s able to retain moisture more
effectively, as well as giving it a slightly bouncier, more