Porketta

Put all herbs and spices in a small coffee mill and grind fine. If you have no coffee mill, put in plastic bag remembering to push air out of it while closing it. Lay on bread board and crush contents with smooth side of meat mallet. Place crushed mixture in a small bowl.

Untie and unroll piece of meat until it is laying out flat in front of you. Rub half the ground seasonings on all surfaces of inside of meat and rub in good with fingers. Turn meat over and repeat with remaining crushed seasonings.

Roll meat back up tightly jelly roll style and tie all along piece of meat knotting along top seam where meat meets meat. If there's any spice laying around, rub it on meat. Place in 1 gallon zipper bag and throw in fridge for 2 days. On the third day, prepare barbecue to cook meat. Wrap meat in heavy duty aluminum foil and seal tightly. Lay on grill and cook from 1-1/4 hours to 2 hours. Use a thermometer to check for doneness. When it reaches 160 degree Fs, meat is done. Anyway, back to cooking meat. Turn meat every 15 minutes.

When meat reaches 120 degrees F, remove foil and lay directly onto grill. Finish cooking turning often to brown and crisp. Let sit 15 minutes before slicing.

For oven roasting, lay roast on a rack in shallow roaster, hopefully one with a lid or you can cover with foil. Place in a preheated 325 degree oven with meat thermometer inserted 1/2 way through thickest part of meat. Roast 1-3/4 hours to 2-1/4 hours. This is determined by how large a piece of meat you are cooking. Again, when thermometer registers 160 degrees, your meat is done, let sit 15 minutes before serving.

This meat is best sliced as thin as possible and eaten on hard rolls that have been split open, buttered and toasted under broiler or on barbecue. Spread or squirt on some brown spicy mustard and yum yum.

cook's notes

Don't pay a big price for a rolled pork roast, just ask the butcher to debone it for you. When you get it home, take a very, very sharp knife, like a big butcher knife. Starting about 1/3rd of the way down cut meat from one side toward the other side, stop with in an inch from reaching it, cut downward with knife about 1 to 1-1/2 inches, make a sharp turn with knife and cut meat back toward the other side of meat, stopping within an inch of outside edge. Gently open meat up and make it lay flat. It's easy and will save you money.

My husbands people settled mainly on the iron range in northern Minnesota. Polish, Germans, Finns, Italians and mostly Ukrainian peoples settled here. The Italians brought this wonderful recipe for porketta. You will never smell or eat anything better then pork butt or shoulder fixed this way. You can buy it already made up in the supermarkets there, but down here where I live I have to do it myself. It isn't hard to do.