New Year's Crown Roast

Pork crown roast is a common request for the holidays. It makes some cooks nervous due to its unusual shape, the cost, and the pressure of feeding holiday guests. I have cooked a crown roast at my house for the past few New Year's Days.

Every year I have used this same stuffing recipe from allrecipes.com

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/special-occasion-stuffed-crown-pork-roast/detail.aspx

The stuffing is absolutely phenomenal. It's fun for my daughter and I to put this together, as there are a lot of ingredients, and we don't normally cook like this at home. I'm not generally a fan of cranberries, but this recipe has a nice balance of the berries and sugar to keep a sweet tooth like mine satisfied.

This year, I started with a 5 pound roast with 10 bones. This size is smaller than what most recipes will call for. At D.W. Whitaker, we sometimes joke about how we specialize in miniatures, because we sell quite a number of items that are smaller than what is available at other meat markets.

First I generously seasoned the roast with ingredients I get at our West Side Market neighbor Urban Herbs: salt, pork rub, garlic, sage. Then I wrapped the roast in film and left it in my 'fridge that way overnight.

Next day, I planned on roasting for 2 1/2 to 3 hours at 325. I've seen many different recommendations for time and temperature on these crown roasts. I try to roast everything at 325 as much as possible to keep things simple.

In a pan with a roasting rack, I set the roast upside down so that it's resting on the tips of the bones with foil over the top of the meat. At 325, I set the timer for 2 hours. After 1 1/2 hours I started working on the stuffing, which I had finished right about when the timer sounded. My internal thermometer read 135. I turned the roast so that the tips were pointing up, and covered with foil. A roast this small does not hold much stuffing, and I prefer to bake it separately in a pan anyways. I put just a little bit in the top of the roast while the rest of it went to a baking pan on another rack.

After checking my internal temp a couple times, I ended up keeping it in the oven for another hour, making total cooking time 3 hours. The thermometer read 155. I let it rest on the stovetop for 10 minutes before carving, as people say this allows the juices to settle.

The roast was fully cooked, juicy, and delicious. And the stuffing was the best batch I ever made. I was a little more patient this year and did everything right by the book. I wish I would have let the roast go another 1/2 hour in the oven, as I would have liked it a little more brown on the outside.

You can order a crown roast from us any time of the year and make a meal to remember.