Porchetta AU Hopes Sky's the Limit with New Gourment Pork Product

By: Jamie Creamer

This time a year ago , Bill Jones had never heard of porchetta.

Now, the retired CoAg meat scientist lives and breathes it.

He has since early this year, when he traveled 10,300 miles round trip to Ariccia, Italy, to learn and bring back to Auburn the closely guarded secrets of producing this exclusive gourmet pork product–a product which, if it proves to be commercially successful on this side of the Atlantic, could be an economic boon for Auburn, the university; Auburn, the city; and Alabama's small-scale pork producers.

Porchetta (por-KEH-tuh) is a product made from a completely deboned pig that is seasoned with a distinct blend of herbs and spices, then rolled and tied and roasted in a special stainless-steel oven for several hours at extremely high heat, until the skin is deliciously crisp and the meat mouthwateringly lean, moist and tender.

"With porchetta, the entire process is done by hand, from deboning the carcass to slicing the finished product," says Jones, who has been learning the technique from Ariccia's most masterful porchetta producer, and then practicing and practicing and practicing some more. "It is extremely time-consuming and labor-intensive to make. But the end product is well worth it. It's like nothing you've ever tasted."

Though 99.9 percent of Americans probably have never even heard of porchetta, it isn't some nouvelle cuisine. It originated sometime late in the b.c .'s in Ariccia, an ancient city 20 miles south of Rome in Italy's Albani Hills. In the centuries since, eateries in other Italian cities have tried to pass off as authentic their imitations of the wildly popular porchetta di Ariccia , but to no avail. The Ariccia recipe has never been shared outside the 12 generational producers.

Until now.

In an international commercial business venture between a group of Ariccia porchetta producers and investors and Auburn University and the College of Agriculture–a partnership doing business as Ariccia Partners LLC–porchetta is now available in the U.S., but exclusively in Auburn, Ala.

The product, which is being marketed under the trademark name Porchetta Originale, made its official public debut Sept. 25 on the AU Haley Center Concourse, as 80,000 or so Auburn fans converged on Jordan-Hare to watch the Tigers take on the Citadel. On game day, 5,000 two-ounce samples of porchetta, sandwiched "naked" between bread, were distributed to curious game-goers.

The reaction was highly favorable, which was highly good, because under the partnership agreement that AU's Department of Technology Transfer brokered, the university in general and the College of Agriculture in particular, will get a percentage of sales.

Porchetta Originale isn't barbecue–so NO barbecue sauce or any type condiment is allowed–and it isn't lunchmeat. The handcrafted product is, in fact, a delicacy and could sell for $10-$12 per pound when production reaches the point of wide distribution. Right now, the sole place it can be purchased is the AU Meats Lab, but that's only the beginning. Ariccia Partners sees the day when Auburn's own authentic, Ariccia-style porchetta will be available regularly to the public, likely through high-end delis and supermarkets.

So how did porchetta find its way from Ariccia to Auburn? It goes back to 2002, when the AU College of Human Sciences established in Ariccia its Study Abroad in Italy Program (CHS@AU in Italy)–a program that's a story in itself.

From that program grew a feeling of camaraderie and near kinship between Ariccia and Auburn and a concerted effort to link the two. The mayors even exchanged visits, and talk began, not just of educational ties between the two cities, but of cultural and even commercial connections as well. Porchetta was the ticket. In Ariccia, the gastronomical delight is highly profitable for producers and an economic goldmine. And a part of the culture? You bet.

On his trip to Ariccia, Jones understood how much so, when he witnessed the mass appeal of the product, and not just among the city's 18,000 residents.

"Every weekend, 30,000 to 40,000 people from Rome and other areas come to Ariccia for no other reason than to have porchetta," Jones says, noting that most enjoy it in outdoor cafes known as fraschettas. "Porchetta is extremely important to the city's economy."

With the product decided, the group of Ariccia investors put up their money to get the project going.

For the research to determine whether this porchetta project was feasible–that is, whether authentic, Ariccia-style porchetta could be precisely duplicated in another city in another country–they looked to John Jensen, then interim CoAg dean and director of the Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station.

Jensen went straight to Bill Jones.

Jones was officially retiring after 28 years at Auburn in December 2003, but this porchetta business sounded too interesting to pass up. He agreed to stay with the department in an emeritus position for another year, to teach a class and, primarily, to take charge of the porchetta project.

His first move was to learn about the product firsthand. He traveled to Ariccia and spent nine days in intensive training under Roberto Azzocchi, a fourth-generation porchetta producer and owner of the most successful porchetta production plant in Ariccia. Jones became the first person ever outside the group of porchetta producers to learn the previously undisclosed techniques involved in boning, seasoning, rolling, trussing, roasting and serving porchetta. But don't ask him to share them with you.

"The original recipe, including the whole process of making it, is a carefully protected secret handed down through generations of these 12 families," Jones says. "I had to sign a nondisclosure agreement. I am absolutely bound not to tell."

The same goes for the small group of graduate students and Meats Laboratory staff whom Jones and Azzocchi, on an August visit to Auburn, have trained for various stages of the creation of porchetta, which is the whole carcass, and tronchetta (trun-KEH-tuh), a smaller product consisting of just the belly and loin. All have been required to sign binding don't-tell agreements.

Although the specifics of porchetta are secrets, here's a general overview. It starts, of course, with the pig. Lean, heavily muscled pigs are raised specifically for porchetta in Ariccia.

Later this month, AU swine specialist Frank Owsley will go to Ariccia to study the genetics of the porchetta pigs. He'll bring that information back to AU and work at the Swine Research Unit to develop the bred-for-porchetta pig here and then share that information with Alabama hog farmers looking for specialty markets. Watch for more in the next issue of Ag Illustrated.

Back in Ariccia, the specially-bred pigs are sold to packing plants for processing. At the plant, every bone in every carcass is removed by hand. The meat is then laid out flat and seasoned with a unique blend of salt, black pepper, garlic and rosemary. The seasoning is massaged into the meat; then the product is rolled, tied and skewered; the product is refrigerated and then it goes in the oven.

After five hours at 450-degree-plus temperatures, porchetta comes out of the oven and immediately is rolled into a cooling room. Then it's delivered to some 80 to 100 restaurants and fraschettas.

In Auburn, Jones, after extensive trial and error, has at last duplicated Ariccia's porchetta process as closely as possible.

Initially, all porchetta production is taking place at the Meats Lab, where the roasting is done in a massive, $40,000 high-tech oven, a gift to Auburn from the Italian associates in the partnership. It's large enough to roast 32 tronchetta at a time.

Later this fall, AU agricultural economist Bob Nelson will be traveling the state to conduct porchetta taste tests in certain supermarkets. The results will help determine the product's outlook statewide.

After that, the sky could be the limit.

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