Anime Recipe: Bacon Jacket Potato AKA "Gotcha Roast Pork" from Food Wars (Vegan option)

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This next recipe was a request on TikTok from jojo._.joestar - Gotcha Roast Pork (also known as Roast Pork, Just Kidding) from Food Wars! In the anime, when Soma has to make a roast pork dish but his meat was sabotaged, he gets creative and creates an artificial one with mashed potato wrapped in a bacon jacket and topped with a red wine reduction.

We used red wine vinegar that we had on hand instead of red wine and it reduced just the same, plus we made this vegan! The only thing that prevents the original from being vegan is the bacon, so we swapped it with this seitan bacon and it came out great.

This recipe comes from the manga/anime directly. I'll be posting it up with my minor modifications and some tips I learned along the way, but you can see the original here.

Gotcha Roast Pork in the first episode of Food Wars

Ingredients

• 6 Russett potatoes
• 3/4 cup diced mushroom
• 0.5 large diced sweet onion (or 1 small-to-medium sized onion)
• 1 tbsp rosemary
• 1 tsp salt & pepper
• 2 tbsp butter or vegan butter alternative
• 2 packs of bacon; we used this seitan bacon to make it vegan!
• 1 cup red wine or red wine vinegar (we used red wine vinegar; see note in the Tips section below)
• 1/4 cup mirin
• 2 tbsp reduced sodium soy sauce
• Optional: 1 tbsp parsley

Instructions

1. Wash, peel, and cube six potatoes. Boil them until they are soft (about 15 minutes with the lid on).
2. While the potatoes are boiling, dice your onion and mushrooms and then pan fry them until caramelized with 1 tbsp butter.
3. Drain the potatoes and then mash. Your potatoes should be a bit chunky so they can hold their shape when you form your log. Add in the onions and mushrooms and mix well. 
4. Add rosemary, salt, and pepper to the potato mix. Stir to evenly distribute the seasonings. Let cool.
5. Once cooled, form your log and wrap with the bacon. Wrap with twine.
6. Bake the potato mixture at 375 for 30 minutes, flipping half way.
7. In a pan, bring red wine (or red wine vinegar) to a boil. Let it boil until it starts to thicken/reduce.
8. Once reduced, add soy sauce, mirin, and remaining butter. Let boil until butter is fully melted. Set aside.
9. When the "pork roast" is done, coat with the red wine (vinegar) reduction.
10. Optional: Garnish with some parsley or watercress. 
11. Cut into desired amount of servings and enjoy!

Tips

• If you want to save time, you can buy premade mashed potatoes and a premade balsamic glaze. 
• If you are under 21 and can't buy alcohol, are allergic to alcohol, or are uncomfortable using alcohol in cooking for any reason, red wine vinegar will do just fine if you do make the reduction yourself. We used that and the vinegar scent/flavor wore off, much like when you make a reduction with red wine and the alcohol burns off.
• When getting ready to form the log, put down the twine and some of the bacon (in that order) first so it's easier to wrap it. Your potato log will be heavy and it'll make it hard to wrap things underneath it entirely! So this will save you some grief.
• Because your potato log will be heavy, I recommend using two spatulas to flip it. Anthony and I did this together so each of us could have a spatula and still hold the baking pan in place, and this way we were able to flip it without it falling apart.
• Between dicing onions and making your own red wine or red wine vinegar reduction, do yourself a favor and cook this with a window open on either side of your house. Your eyes and nose will thank you for the cross breeze of fresh air while you're cooking!

The Verdict

This was actually pretty hard to make. It took us about an hour and a half from start to finish, and like I mentioned in the tips section, the log was fairly hard to wrap with bacon. I couldn't even wrap mine with twine because whenever I tried to, it'd fall apart since I didn't have the twine set down before (which is why I advise you do that). Luckily we ended up not really needing the twine, since most of our bacon stayed put, but I still recommend using it to really reinforce the shape. 

Since it was harder to make and took a long time, I'm going to rate this a 6/10 for ease of replication.  I give the flavor a 9/10 rating, so overall this gets a 7/10 overall from me.

Have a food from an anime that you want me to try to recreate? Let me know in the comments below! Plus, follow me on TikTok to see the behind the scenes of how this was made.