Drive the old road through the Bairrada region toward Coimbra and you will smell it before you see the signs: roadside restaurants around Mealhada roasting garlic, bay leaf and pork skin until it goes dark and blistered. That is leitão, one of the great dishes of Portuguese cooking.
Traditional leitão uses a whole suckling pig, three to four weeks old, split and rubbed inside and out with a garlic, pepper and bay paste, then roasted in a wood-fired oven until the skin goes glass-crisp. Very few home kitchens have an oven built for a whole piglet, so this recipe adapts the marinade and technique to a good skin-on pork belly, which gives you that same crackling in a shape your oven can handle. It will not fool a Bairrada local, but it will make a very good Sunday roast.
For another Sunday pork roast, our Caçoila (recipe on the site) is the low and slow braised version, and Febras Grelhadas (recipe on the site) is the weeknight grilled cousin of the same marinade.
Leitão à Bairrada Recipe
Ingredients
- For the marinade:
- 10 garlic cloves, mashed to a paste
- 2 bay leaves, crumbled
- 1 tablespoon sweet paprika
- 1 cup dry white wine
- 2 tablespoons coarse salt
- 1 teaspoon black pepper
- For the pork:
- 4 pounds skin-on pork belly, skin scored in a diamond pattern (ask your butcher to score it if you are not comfortable doing it yourself)
- Extra coarse salt, for the skin
- 2 tablespoons lard or olive oil
- Orange wedges and lemon wedges, to serve
Instructions
- Pat the pork belly completely dry. Confirm the skin is scored in a tight diamond pattern, cutting through the skin and fat but not into the meat.
- Blend the garlic, bay leaves, paprika, wine, salt, and pepper into a loose paste.
- Rub the marinade into the meat side and the cut edges only, keeping the skin itself dry and bare.
- Place the pork skin side up, uncovered, on a rack in the fridge overnight. This dries out the skin, which is the real secret to good crackling.
- The next day, pat the skin dry again and rub it generously with coarse salt.
- Roast at 325°F, skin side up on a rack over a pan, for about 2.5 hours, until the meat is fork tender.
- Raise the oven to 475–500°F for the final 20 to 30 minutes to blister and crackle the skin. Watch it closely, it goes from perfect to burnt fast.
- Rest 15 minutes, slice, and serve with orange wedges, lemon wedges, and fried potatoes if you like.
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