Roast Leg of Pork

Inspired by a recent episode of America's Test Kitchen, Tom brined and roasted a small leg of pork over the weekend. Neither of us has had much experience with brining things. I tried it out earlier this year on some duck, and it turned out well, but I haven't tried any brining since. Brining is supposed to make the meat more succulent and tender, and it does, but you also need at least 1 day of advance preparation.

Saturday afternoon Tom scored the outer layer of fat on the pork into a nice checkerboard kind of pattern then placed the small leg of pork into our largest stock pot. He added 1.5 liters of Coca-Cola, 1 head of peeled garlic, a handful of bay leaves, kosher salt, and lots of peppercorns. Into the fridge it went, happy and content in its cola bath to brine and bubble and do its thing overnight.

Sunday afternoon Tom removed the leg of pork from the cola solution, rinsed it in cold water, discarding the brine, then set the leg of pork to rest on a rack for an hour while he made an herb rub. At this point I waddled into the kitchen and helpfully commented on how much the leg of pork looked like some sort of alien autopsy. I got the “look” which was a signal for me to turn right back out of the kitchen; my “help” wasn’t needed. sheesh, I get no love.

The herb rub consisted of a large amount of sage leaves, a large amount of parsley, about 10 cloves of garlic, some kosher salt, some ground black pepper and some olive oil. Tom processed that into a paste and after the hour was up, rubbed it all over the roast making sure to get all the garlicky love into the nooks and crannies of the skin.

While the leg of pork was cooking, Tom basted it periodically with a glaze made up of apple cider, brown sugar and cloves. When the internal temperature had reached 145 degrees, he removed the roast from the oven and let it rest on the counter where it would continue to cook in it’s own juices for a bit longer.

After the roast had rested for a bit, we sliced into it and were delighted to find that the meat was not dry at all, but moist and juicy and melt in your mouth tender. It wasn't sweet either, although you'd think so after using coca-cola to brine it with. The flavor of the meat and skin together was delicious but we both agreed that the meat alone needed some more seasoning. Tom said that next time he’d score the meat AND the skin and shove some herbs and garlic into the holes just to flavor the meat a bit more. I thought it was fabulous, although I was a little weirded out by the texture of the meat, which was so juicy that if you stared at it too long it sort of stopped looking like meat. Ack! I better stop, I’m getting the willies again.

So what did we do with all this meat, considering I had done quite a bit of cooking over the weekend myself. Well, Tom sliced all of it off the bone, a good portion of it was packaged for the freezer for later use. We saved and froze the bone which we thought we might use in some soup one of these days. Some of it was set aside for sandwiches for my lunch this week and the rest of it went into the fridge for a stir-fry, which Tom made for dinner last night, and it turned out really well.

Written by Deb on October 29, 2003 12:10 AM