Roast Rack of Pork – The Main Tips For Your Rack To Be Awesome

This is my first blog attempt for the Whisky Wives, so I’m going out on a limb here in terms of content.  I had this photo on my camera and it reminded me of this dish, so I thought I would share it with you.

I’m a big fan of roasts and with autumn in full swing (brrrrr) this type of meal is perfect at keeping you warm, toastie and giving you rosy cheeks of joy.  I have tried roasting pork loin before as well, but I find the rack far easier and more successful. I actually learnt how to make it watching Gary Rhodes of all people (UK chef) on some cooking show.

Here are the main tips for your rack to be awesome:

• Pick your rack from the butcher carefully – it needs to have a good thick layer of fat on top.  Don’t go for any lean/healthy option here, otherwise you’ll have crap cracking, which defeats the point of having roast pork.
• Use a roasting rack in your roasting pan to keep the pork off the bottom of the pan – this seems to let the hot air circulate better around your pork.
• Pre-heat your oven to the highest setting for a good 30 minutes before putting the pork into the oven.  This may sound crazy, but you’ll find that with all that fat, it’s almost impossible to dry out this cut of meat (just don’t burn down your house).
• Score your rack well – the butcher may have half-heartedly scored it for you, but often this isn’t good enough.  Get a sharp knife and score through the fat, but not to the meat itself (a little tricky, but after a few practices you’ll get the hang of it).
• Rub sea salt into the scoring/pork – you can use a little olive oil here, but I don’t think it’s essential from memory.
• Put the pork into the oven & turn it down to 180c for about 1.5-2 hours, depending on how big your rack is and how good your oven is.  The rack will be golden-brown and crisp when finished – juices should be clear.  
• When done, don’t wrap the rack in foil as you’ll destroy the crackling.  But you can just let it rest a little before serving.
• Cut the whole piece of crackling off the top of the rack first before slicing up the rack – I have done it the other way (i.e. slicing through the crackling for each slice of meat) and it kills the crackling as well.  This way, you can slice up the meat to serve on plates and then divide up the crunchy crackling as you see fit at the end (one incy piece for you and the rest for me – hehehe!

And walah!  You have an amazing roast pork to devour.  I normally serve this with shredded cabbage cooked in a pan with butter (delicious) and do either red cabbage with grated pear or green/white cabbage with shredded apple.  So good.

Penne