Easy pork loin roast with perfect crackling, my favourite method.
Ingredients: Pork loin roast, stock, spices.
Method:
Unwrap pork loin don’t bother patting it dry, slap it straight in a baking dish.
Drop in about a tsp each of whole coriander seeds, allspice, star anise a few cloves, some cinnamon some Szechwan peppercorns, some dried chilli flakes and some garlic or onion powder or anything else you feel like.
Score the skin with a razor or scalpel slap on some salt. The salt is for flavour it makes no difference to the crackling.
Fill the dish with chicken stock to just below the skin.
Bake at 160-180C for about 2 hours or until a thermometer reads about 55c degrees.
Then crank your oven as high as it goes, the skin will have dried out while the meat was slow baking. Watch it like a hawk, the oven-dried skin will crackle really fast over about ten minutes. Loosely cover any parts that brown too quickly until the whole surface has crackled.
Rest in the pan juice for 10 minutes then carve it up and enjoy.
The juices make amazing gravy, just add a little flour and cook down to thicken.
The leftover pork is amazing in noodle soup and fits with lots of different sides and meals.
This method works especially well with pork belly as well as pork loin. It can be cooked lower for a much longer time and will still crackle at the end.
Replace the spices with rosemary, sage, thyme, oregano etc and you get a different flavour profile.
This method does not require drying out the skin or excess salt or additional oil before the meat goes in the oven. It works because the skin dries out in the oven regardless of patting it or salting it at the beginning. The fat also renders as it cooks and the dry skin crackles perfectly right at the end. The stock protects, adds flavour and keeps the meat perfectly moist.
