Oven cooked chine of pork

For this recipe, we will be learning how to prepare an oven-cooked chine of porn, which can also be called as roasted pork loin. This dish is often served for dinner and is quite popular in Italy, especially its cured variant, the Lonzino, which is a type of “salumi” that is made exclusively in the country. In order for this recipe to be followed by anyone not living in Italy, we will be using a regular pork loin that can easily be bought in grocery stores or local meat shops. So, let’s get started on how to prepare the oven-cooked chine of pork.

Serving: 4 Persons

Recommended Wine Pairing: Luce della Vite

Ingredients:

  • Pork loin with bone, 40 ounces each
  • 2 rosemary twigs
  • 2 garlic cloves
  • 6.75 tbsp. of olive oil
  • 1 glass of dry white wine
  • Salt and pepper

pork loin being prepared for roasting

Instructions:

Before preparing the meat, you must first make sure to preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (175 degrees Celsius) so that the oven will be hot enough to cook the meat much quicker. 

While the oven is preheating, you would then need to crush two garlic cloves (making sure that the skin is removed) and two rosemary twigs and mix them together. Then, you can add ample amounts of salt and pepper on the mixture. Once you mix the said ingredients, the mixture would eventually have a pasty texture, which is needed for it to stick better to the meat.

After creating the mixture, prepare the meat and pierce it on several places. The piercing will not only allow the interior of the pork to cook but it would also enable you to insert the pasty mixture into the openings to add flavor to the interior. After inserting a sufficient amount of the mixture inside the pork, you would then have to rub the remaining mixtures on the exterior of the pork loin.

If you want the flavors on the pork to be more concentrated, you have the option of binding or tying the pork using kitchen twine or cooking twin. By binding the pork loin while roasting, it will allow the juices to remain inside the meat. Those juices are what keep the flavor of the pork concentrated. You can either do the binding first before rubbing the mixture or you can do the opposite. Binding pork is relatively easy, and there are dozens of guides online that you can read to learn how to tie pork.

Once the pork loin is rubbed with the mixture and bound, you can finally place the pork loin in the pan and inside the oven. Be sure to turn the pork loin every now and then and then do some basting by scooping the liquids flowing out of the meat using a spoon. Cook the pork loin until the portion at the center is no longer pink, which could often occur after one hour. If you have an instant-read thermometer, you can check the temperature inside the meat, and the temperature should be at least 145 degrees Fahrenheit (63 degrees Celsius) to signal that it is already cooked properly.

Remove the pork from the oven and transfer it to a cutting board. Then, remove the kitchen twine binding the pork and cut the meat in your desired number of slices. Do not discard the juices still in the pan, as you can mix it with dry white wine to create a pan juice that can be served along with the pork loin.

And, there you have it, a recipe on the delicious oven-cooked chine of pork. You can serve this dish with any wine of your choice, but it would pair better with a glass of the Luce della Vite wine.