Honey Spiced Pork Roll and Roasted Carrots
Make a Christmas meal to remember with this mouth-watering roast pork and fennel-seed roasted carrots. It’s a spiced twist on traditional classics.
Every home has a meal that is ritualistically served on Christmas Day. For my family back in India, this Honey Spiced Pork Roll took center stage on our Christmas table. If you were to join us on the 25th of December for a meal, the pork roll would be served to you in thin juicy slices with buttered beans, grilled carrots and potatoes. There is just one word to describe the fusion of honey, pork and spices: glorious!
Happy cooking! I hope you will enjoy this as much as my family and I do.
Preparation: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 3 hours
INGREDIENTS
- 1.5-kg slab of pork belly (must be easy to roll up)*
- 2 tsp. cinnamon
- 1 tsp. clove
- 1 tsp. pepper
- 2 c. water
- 1 dried red chilli (optional)
- 4 cloves garlic, crushed
- 4 Tbs. honey
- 2 tsp. sea salt
- 500 g carrots
- 1 tsp. fennel seeds
- 7 medium-sized potatoes
- Olive oil
METHOD
- Preheat oven to 220°C. Wash the potatoes and slice in half. Prick the meat all over using a fork. With a sharp knife, score the pork skin at 1-cm intervals. Mix the salt and spices together in a bowl. You now have your spice rub for the pork. Sprinkle enough spice all over the meat and massage in evenly. Roll up pork. Tie with cooking string to secure. Rub skin with some oil and sea salt.
- Place pork into a baking dish, pour in 2 cups of water and roast for 30 minutes or until the skin starts to bubble and turn golden.
- Reduce heat to 180°C. Throw in your halved potatoes, crushed garlic and chilli. Cover the baking dish with a foil and roast pork for an hour longer.
- Halve carrots lengthwise, sprinkle on the fennel seeds, drizzle with oil and season with salt and pepper. Arrange in a separate roasting pan.
- Now, take the pork out of the oven and glaze with the honey. Pop the pork back into the oven without the foil. Put the carrots on a different rack and roast for a further 20 to 30 minutes or until pork is just cooked through and skin is golden and crispy. Take the pork out of the oven and let it rest. The carrots should be done, if not, bake a bit longer.
- Remove string from the pork. Slice it, drizzle over the baking juices and serve with the roasted carrots and potatoes.
*Note: I bought the pork belly from Migros. I went to the butcher behind the meat counter and ordered Schweinebauch zum rollen. Pork belly is called Schweinebauch in German. It’s a cut you don’t easily find but that can be ordered at any butcher.
You could also bake some apples along with the pork. Pork and apples are a marriage made in heaven.
En Guete, Merry Christmas, and Happy Holidays.
Recipe and photo by Maria de Conceicao Wittwer
Maria is a mother of two and lives in the Baden region of Aargau. Besides looking after her tiny humans and working as a freelance copy editor and content creator, she is also pursuing her two passions, cooking and photography. Find her culinary creations over here @CurryOnCooking.ch on Instagram.
