I am thinking about using a peace of pork neck as the main meat dish for Christmas. But I can only find only some stew dishes. Ideas anyone?
The meat will be deboned and without skin.
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The meat will be deboned and without skin.
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The cut I (and most probably Tobi, too) was referring to is called neck in Germany, Austria and Italy; in the English wikipedia entry for Capocollo, which uses exactly that part, it is described as the "muscle running from the neck to the 4th or 5th rib of the pork shoulder or neck".
Now I wonder which part is the one called neck in the U.S. …
Compare http://kokblog.johannak.com/pork-diagram/
with http://www.virtualweberbullet.com/meatcharts_photos/porkcarcass.pdf
I brown a seasoned 1.5kg/3 pound piece of meat (which I find is plenty for 4-6 people, if there are more to feed, it's just as easy to make two pieces), roast it with around 500ml/2 cups of liquid at 150C/300F for 1 1/2 hours and then for another 1/2 hour at 200-220C/400-430F to crisp it up a bit and reduce and thicken the liquid, to make it into a sort of gravy.
In the summer, I like to make it "porchetta-style" by butterflying it and stuffing with rosemary, crushed garlic and fennel seeds, then rolling back up and tying with kitchen string and using equal parts of white wine and water/broth for the liquid – it's delicious warm, but just as nice the next day, cold and cut into thin slices to put on a sandwich.
For christmas, however, I would leave the meat whole, season with sage and/or juniper berries, use hard cider and water/broth as a liquid, and add whole shallots and apples for the last hour or so: they collapse into a kind of savoury baked apples, flavour the gravy and are wonderful with mashed potatoes.