Christmas roast
Roast pork is almost a mandatory part of the traditional Estonian Christmas dinner. In every Estonian home, roast pork is made in its own, very traditional way. I’m posting here a slightly less traditional and time-consuming way to make a delicious oven-roast. It is roasted meat stewed at a low temperature for at least 7 hours. The result is worth the effort.
Preparation time: 8 hours
Level: Medium
Quantity: about 4 kg roast
Ingredients:
5 kg pork neck chop. You can use any other meat, but I prefer the neck chop because it has a bit of lard interwoven with the lean meat, which makes the meat extra juicy
7-8 cloves of garlic, cut in half, to stuff the meat
1.5 tsp dried thyme
1.5 teaspoons of dried oregano
1 tsp ground black pepper
About 1.5 tablespoons of sea salt
2 tablespoons of mustard
200 ml of red wine
2-3 tablespoons cooking oil for browning the meat
Preparation:
- Peel the garlic cloves and cut them in half lengthwise.
- With a sharp knife, make deep incisions here and there on the room-temperature piece of the meat and stuff the garlic gloves deep into the meat.
- Season the meat with sea salt, black pepper, thyme, and oregano, and rub the spices into the meat.
- Brown the meat in the pan on all sides, it takes about 5-10 minutes per piece of meat.
- Place the pieces of meat in a large baking pan, pour in the red wine, and add another sprig of rosemary and a few sprigs of thyme.
- Cover the meat completely with foil and cook at 150 degrees C for 7-8 hours.
- Remove the liquid from the meat and use it later to make the sauce.
- If desired, the meat can be additionally browned under the grill for 15-20 minutes.
- Meat is extremely tender, cut it with a very sharp knife or it is easier to cut the roast if it is cold and warm it up immediately before serving.
Ready!!
