I can cook all kinds of meat except leg of pork. It always turns out so dry, I’ve now given up even trying.
Graham, Lawshall, Suffolk
Don’t be so hard on yourself, Graham. Leg of pork is one of the trickier cuts, a fact acknowledged way back when British cuisine wasn’t exactly renowned for being much cop. In her 1954 classic Food in England, Dorothy Hartley goes so far as to recommend not roasting it in an oven at all, but in front of the fire. Clearly, that’s not very practical for most households these days, but Hartley adds that if you do have to use the oven, “wrap the thin end with a thick cabbage leaf or something to slow up its cooking, otherwise it will be dried away to nothing before the thick end … is thoroughly cooked through”.
Contemporary cooks find pork leg no less hard work. “It’s quite a complex cut,” says James Ferguson, chef/co-patron of The Kinneuchar Inn in Kilchonquhar, Fife. “Unlike other pork, it doesn’t have much connective tissue or covering fat, which is why it often ends up dry.” In other words, this stuff is infuriatingly easy to overcook. It’s worth bearing in mind, however, that leg from a native breed such as a middle white or tamworth pig has a lot more fat, though that does come at a price – it’ll set you back as much as £25 a kilo, compared with about £4 for meat of dubious provenance or £10 for free-range from the supermarket, but as with anything in life, you gets what you pays for.
Ferguson says that, instead of roasting pork leg, especially if you’re cooking it in one piece, your best bet is to braise it – with shallots, garlic, herbs, cider and stock, say – very, very slowly and at a very low heat (ie, about 120C fan). “And to counter that tendency to dryness, introduce some fat in the form of bacon or lardo, which will help enormously, as will an overnight salting or a couple of days in a 3% brine.” (The same applies however you intend to cook it, incidentally.)
If roasting is more your bag, however, there are a few tricks to minimise pork leg’s vexing ways, says Sally Abé, head chef at The Harwood Arms in west London, which was voted Britain’s best at last month’s Top 50 Gastropub awards. “Always make sure you cook it from room temperature, rather than fridge-cold, because it will cook more evenly that way,” she says. Resting, too, is crucial, so the meat relaxes and the juices get a chance to redistribute themselves throughout the whole joint.
Another option is to bone the leg, which makes it far easier to control. “Ask your butcher to roll it with the scored skin on the outside,” says Ferguson, who after just five months in business took home the gastropub gong at the National Food & Drink Awards earlier this month (you’ve got to laugh, Ferguson says: he and his partner moved to Fife expressly because they were “tired of working in kitchens where chefs were driven by awards and stars”). “And leave it uncovered in the fridge overnight, to dry the skin,” he says. That will make for much better crackling, as will a good sprinkle of sea salt a good few hours ahead of time, Abé adds – do that while you’re waiting for the meat to come up to room temperature, .
Perhaps the simplest solution, however, is to ditch the traditional approach to pork leg joints entirely. Ferguson swears by cutting them into steaks, for frying, roasting or barbecuing, an approach Abé is 100% behind: “It’s much more risk-free to cook this cut in smaller pieces,” she says. “At the pub, we seam butcher it into the individual muscles [ask a good butcher to do this for you, if need be], because they all cook slightly differently, depending on how close to the bone they were.” Season, colour in a very hot pan with butter and a sprig of thyme, say, then transfer to a rack in a low oven and cook until medium: “If the meat is of good enough quality,” Abé explains, “there’s no need for pork to be well done.” Don’t try it with meat from the local mini-mart, though.
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