Porchetta

Porchetta is one of the traditional ways of preparing pork and can be considered a speciality of Perugia, though it is now common everywhere in Italy. Nevertheless, its origins can be traced back to our countryside. Porchetta was once made with the meat of young, often wild mountain pigs, which never weighted more than 50 kg and fed exclusively on acorns.

For folk celebrations, farmers would kill the pig very early in the day and prepare it for further processing. Still today, Porchetta is prepared following the old recipes. After slaughtering, the pig was cleaned well, filled will small pieces of meat, offal and cartilage, and seasoned with salt, garlic, fennel and pepper. The pork is roasted on a spit in a wood oven, which is heated 3 or 4 hours beforehand. Towards the end of the cooking process, the heat is rekindled by adding some matchwood, so that a crisp, golden crust is formed around the pork.

A popular custom is that of placing containers underneath the Porchetta, which are usually made of earthenware, to collect the juices during cooking. In Umbrian dialect, this is called “intocco”. The pig’s soletti, meaning the trotters, the tail and the ears are cut into small pieces, cooked in these juices and seasoned with garlic, salt, pepper, sage, rosemary and wild fennel.