For most households, the new year will begin with pork for dinner. Many feel that it is good luck to have pork to start the new year off. I know my grandmother said that you need to eat pork to start the new year because you want to look forward into the new year and a pig "roots" forward.
Many people like a bone in pork crown roast as it makes for a nice looking center piece. One drawback with this roast is the fact that it is big. You will need to invite many people for dinner and will more than likely still have some leftovers.
For this reason I thought I would show you how to make a smaller boneless pork crown roast. Some have said that it does not look like the bone in crown roast and I will have to agree but it is a boneless roast and it is smaller. This roast should feed 4 - 5 people and maybe still have some leftovers. This is why I like it and it does make a nice looking center piece,
We start with buying and cutting a half boneless pork loin. We were able to purchase the loin half at our favorite grocer. This consisted of the center loin and the sirloin end together. For a refresher please refer to our previous blog;
http://www.meatmadesimple.com/blog/cutting-a-boneless-pork-loin.
Pictured below is our purchase. The picture on the right is the same loin that I turned over and began to cut in half as you see with my knife.
Now continue cutting to separate the loin into two pieces.
For now we will want to work with only one of the halves at a time. Either half will do.
Now place this half of the half loin with the fat side down on the cutting table and the top of the triangle pointing up. Next we will cut at various spots about 3/4's of the way thru the meat from the point of this triangle. I like to use my index finger as a guide as to where I will make my cuts. As you see in the picture below I use the distance from my knuckle to the end of my finger. My thinking is that this is one serving. You can adjust to what you feel is an average serving for your family.
And continue to cut slightly more than 3/4 of the way thru the pork loin. Be cautious not to cut all the way thru. It is better to not cut enough and have to come back and cut a little more than it is to cut to far.
Don't worry if that last piece does not measure the same as the others. You will see why if the next few pictures. And now that you have made all your cuts you should have something that looks like this.
And now if you grab both ends and form a circle you will have a boneless pork loin crown roast.
This next step is not required but I like to tie the two ends together. I first use my knife to poke a hole thru both ends as you see below.
And then use my finger to push a string thru and tie together using a note that you feel comfortable with.
Next, I placed the crown roast in a pie plate. I have used an 8 inch cake pan in the past or even an aluminum pan that I purchased at our local grocer. Any 8 or 9 inch pan will work.
And now I took a little break from cutting and I made some stuffing. For this I made a box stuffing that I bought but you can use your favorite stuffing that you make, I'm sure your homemade would be better. I have even used sauerkraut. You decide what you want, but I was surprised how good this boxed stuffing was.
OK, now that I have my fully cooked stuffing ready, I place it all in the center section of my crown. I did press it down a little so that I could get it all in but I left the top inch or so a little fluffy.
I then place the pie plate on a cookie sheet and covered it as I placed it into a 225°F over. Yes, it will be a low and slow cooking but I want my crown roast nice and moist. And it was.
It was in this 225°F oven for 1 hour and 15 minutes when the internal temperature of the meat reached 110°F. Remember the stuffing was already fully cooked and was still hot when we placed it into our crown.
At this time I removed the foil cover and turned the oven up to 400°F. The only reason I did this was to help brown the crown some. In 30 minutes we had the internal temperature of the meat at 154°F and the internal of the stuffing was 148°F. and there was a nice crust on the stuffing with some browning of the crown. I removed our crown from the oven and let it "rest" covered on the counter for about 10 minutes.
I then placed it on a serving plate for our pretty center piece.
It was easy to carve as the servings had already been determined. Remember what we did earlier. But then I sliced the servings into thinner slices as you see below. Look at that moist pork. And that is after it had been cut for a while.
Remember to cut across the grain as you are slicing. The tip here it to remember that each slice should have some of the fat as part of it. See picture above how there is a thin layer of fat on each slice. For additional information you might want to refer to;
http://www.meatmadesimple.com/blog/cutting-against-the-grain
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