The World Table

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Danish · Starter

Rullepølse

  • Advanced
  • 45 min
  • roughly 3 of 4 for cost

rich · herb-fresh · warm-spiced · earthy Leads with richness that coats and comforts, fresh herbs arguing happily on top, settling low and earthy.

Ingredients

  • 1.5 kg pork belly, rind off, boned and butterflied flat
  • 37 g fine salt, 2.5 percent of the meat
  • 3.7 g curing salt number 1, 0.25 percent of the meat, weighed on a scale reading to 0.01 g
  • 15 g caster sugar
  • 6 g ground allspice
  • 4 g ground white pepper
  • 1 onion, chopped as fine as you can
  • 20 g flat parsley, chopped
  • 2 bay leaves

Equipment

Rolling pin

The skills inside

Brining & curingThe bare simmer: holding liquid below the boilThe wobble & the skewer: testing a bake

Allergen screen

None found among the 14 screened.

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

  1. Lay the belly flat, trim it into a neat rectangle, and rub the salt, curing salt, sugar, allspice and white pepper over both faces. Stack the trimmings back on top, cover, and cure it flat in the fridge for 3 days, turning it daily and pouring off the brine.
  2. Scatter the onion and parsley over the cured face, roll the rectangle tightly along its long side, and tie it every 3 cm, then run one length end to end so the spiral cannot telescope out.
  3. Poach it with the bay in water held at 80C (175F) until the centre reads at least 71C (160F) and a skewer meets no resistance, about 2 hours. Do not let the water boil. 120 min
  4. Lift the roll out, wrap it tightly, and cool it in cold water for 15 minutes to about 30C (86F) while the gelatine is still liquid, then press it under 3 kg of weight between two boards in the fridge overnight. Slice it as thin as you can manage and eat it on rye with mustard. 15 min

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

Brining & curing 88 recipes

  • Fully committed either way: in a wet brine nothing floats clear of the liquid, and in a dry cure every face carries salt, seams and cavities included.
  • The time was measured against the weight and the thickness rather than the recipe’s convenience, and it stayed cold for all of it.
  • The change is visible and can be felt: the flesh is firmer than raw and its colour has deepened or gone more translucent, rather than still being slack and pale.
  • Rinsed and dried as the recipe asks, and anything meant to crisp afterwards has a surface dry and tacky to the touch before it goes near heat.
  • Cooked and tasted, it is seasoned right through to the centre rather than merely salty at the surface, and not so salty that the dish cannot be eaten.

Where it goes wrong It sat in the brine well past its time because a few extra hours seemed harmless; the surface is over-salted and the texture has gone from firm to spongy and wet, and no cooking takes salt back out.

The wobble & the skewer: testing a bake 135 recipes

  • Tested at the true centre and the thickest point, not at the convenient edge: the edge is done long before the answer is.
  • The skewer comes out as the recipe describes, clean and dry or carrying the stated moist crumb, and it does the same on a second test in a different spot.
  • The wobble is read in motion: nudged, the centre moves as one set mass with a faint tremble, rather than a liquid ripple travelling across the surface.
  • The other signs agree with the test: risen and just shrinking from the sides, the top set and dry to a light touch with no wet gloss on it.
  • Pressed lightly at the middle it springs back and leaves no lasting dent.

Where it goes wrong It was judged on the clock and on how the edges looked, so a centre still liquid went to the rack and sank as it cooled, a dense wet seam under a perfectly browned top.

At the Table

The Pour
Riesling or Grenache
Also Right
Cru Beaujolais
From the Taps
Farmhouse saison
Zero-Proof
Cloudy apple juice, chilled

Pork loves fruit and gentle sweetness: orchard-note whites and low-tannin reds flatter it where heavy oak flattens.

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Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Rullepølse Technique: Brining & curingThe skill inside this recipe The cuisine, deeper Technique films from the Danish kitchen