Sunday, February 27, 2011

Beer and Honey marinated Pork roast stuffed with figs, olives, almonds and pine nuts

What you need:
900g pork back, de-boned
1 bottle of beer
1-1,5 Tbsp honey
3 Tbsp olive oil
1onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
90g bread cubes
4 dried figs, chopped
8 green olives, pitted and chopped
25g flaked almonds, roasted
25g pine nuts, roasted
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1 Tbsp fresh chopped parsley
1 egg yolk
salt, pepper

Preheat oven to 200°C
Mix beer and honey in a bowl.
Place pork back in the bowl so that the meat is covered with the beer honey mix.
Marinate for 4 hours.
Heat up two Tbsp of olive oil in a pot and cook onions and garlic in it until soft.
Mix onions and garlic with bread cubes, figs, olives almonds, pine nuts, parsley, lime juice and egg yolk.
Use your hands for that!
Season with salt and pepper.

Spread half of the stuffing on flat inside part of the pork back.
Roll up the pork back starting with the thick part.
Use butcher´s string to wrap the pork roll.
Pour one Tbsp of olive oil in a roasting tray.
Place the meat in it and pour a bit (100ml) of the beer-honey mix over it.
Cook for 60 minutes.
Take the other half of the stuffing and form little balls/dumplings.
Place the balls/dumplings next to the pork roast in the tray and cook or another 15 minutes.
Take the roast out of the oven and let it rest for ten minutes.
Slice the pork roast and serve it with the balls/dumplings and the beer-honey sauce from the tray.

My pork roast turned out to be a bit too dry.
Unfortunately pork tempts to do that...
This is what you can do to prevent the meat from drying out:

  1. Take meat with enough fat. Fat makes meat tender. So don't shy away from fatty meat.You want your roast to taste good, right? Some fat (we are not talking about thick layers or chunks of fat, just some "fat leftovers"!) will help making the meat soft and juicy.
  2. Marinate!The longer the better!
  3. use a roasting tray with a lid. In Germany we have something called "Römertopf", a clay pot that you soak in water for ten minutes before using it. The water evaporates in the closed pot keeping the meat moist.
  4. slow-cook! 200°C is too hot in my opinion.Take your time and cook it slow using 80-120°C. That takes longer (probably 3 to 4 hours). But it's for the best, believe me!And it will prevent you from having dried out meat, like I had (I should have known better...). Also if you slow-cook you can use less fatty meat! whoa.

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