STUFFED PORK LOIN

Entree - Can be Gluten and Lactose free (READ footnotes!)

Our friends don't like turkey so, for Thanksgiving, this was the meat we decided to prepare. The original Italian recipe called for veal instead of pork, but I don't eat veal so... we served it with bacon-wrapped green beans and cranberry sauce. The original recipe did not talk about precooking carrots but theywere definitely too hard, so you'll need to boil tehm at least half the usual time.

1 pork loin, at least 4 lbs trimmed of excess fat
2 12-oz bags of frozen spinach
2 sausage links
5-6 sandwich bread slices
1/2 cup grated parmigiano
1 egg
3 carrots, diced
1/2 cup dry white wine
4 cups warm broth
a few tbsp of milk
Italian 00 flour to dredge
Italian sea salt
Italian extra virgin olive oil


Cook the spinach and drain it. If needed, once it's at room temperature, squeeze the excess water. Partly cook the carrot dices and set aside.

Cut the meat open, in order to obtain a big slice about 3/4" thick (butterfly). Then pound it, to try to flatten it evenly.

Bring broth to a boil and lower heat to simmer.

Remove crust form bread slices, then soak them (the slices ;-) ) in milk. Squeeze milk away and crumble in a bowl.

Add parmigiano, sausages (casing removed and crumbled), carrots and the egg. Mix everything, so it will combine nicely.

Line the meat with the spinach. Top with the sausage mixture and roll the meat. Tie with butcher string and dredge in flour, to coat evenly all the sides.

In a large saucepan with lid, over medium-high heat, warm 2-3 tbsp of olive oil and sear your roll on every side (sprinkling with some salt), deglaze with wine and cook until done through, turning it every once in a while and adding warm broth as needed.

Cut the roll in slices about 1" thick, blend the cooking juices and serve them together, with steamed or sauteed vegetables.


- Cut the meat in a single slice is not that complicated, you'll find many tutorials online or I can email you how to do that.
- If you have it, use some rosemary and sage (you can tie the to the meat): they're perfect with pork meat.
- Most likely, you can cook it in the oven; I haven't tried this so you have to experiment with temperature and time.
- To make it Gluten free, use GF bread and corn starch, instead of flour.
- To make it Lactose free, use water to soak bread and don't use parmigiano in the stuffing.