Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Slow Roasted Shoulder of Pork


Last night, I was working at Pat Whelan's first butchery demonstration in Avoca Monkstown (my first freelance job...).  10 enthusiastic meat lovers joined us for an evening of discovery where they learned about using knives safely, the various cuts of pork and the hidden cuts of beef which have been largely ignored, until now.

While this was going on, I was running up and down the stairs like a dervish to keep an eye on the shoulder of pork which I had cooking away in the prep oven. This is a two stage process, involving a dry rub and then a wet baste – it sounds terribly complicated but it’s actually really easy and you can let it mellow away in the oven while you get on with everything else.   Pat Whelan cooks this outside on his barbeque, but don’t worry if you don’t have one because this works perfectly in a domestic oven.





Slow Roasted Shoulder of Pork

1 boned Pork Shoulder (about 2kg), skin scored and tied with string

Dry Rub
1 tsp each of Garlic Powder, Salt, Black Pepper and Red Pepper flakes, mixed


Place the Pork Shoulder into a large roasting tin, rub with the dry rub mix, getting it well into the scored skin and put it on the grill or in to the oven at Gas Mark 3/Fan 140c for 3 hours.

Make a herb brush by tying a bunch of woody herbs (like rosemary, oregano & thyme) to a wooden spoon handle with string, and make the wet baste mix


  
Wet Baste
2 cloves of Garlic, chopped                          1 tsp Red Pepper Flakes
1 tsp Salt                                                     60ml Apple Cider Vinegar
4 tbsp Honey                                               100ml Oil
100g Butter                                                  2 tbsp Brown Sugar 

Bring all the ingredients to a boil and turn off the heat.  Using the herb brush, baste the pork liberally with the wet baste every 15 minutes for another hour.


Remove the pork shoulder from the oven & allow to rest for 15 minutes.  This isn’t a carving joint (as you can see from the picture above where the meat is already disintegrating)  – the slow roasted pork will fall into shards of deliciousness which you can eat as is, or transform into loads of other dishes including BBQ Pulled Pork Pizza, Pork Carnitas, Pulled Pork Casserole and Pork Burritos.

Slow Roasted Pork with Heirloom Caprese Salad and Herb Bread

BBQ Pulled Pork Pizza

Pulled Pork Burritos





4 comments:

  1. Nice!!! glad it went so well missy x

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  2. Looks fab. I'll be pulling a Hunters Lodge shoulder of pork out the freezer very soon to try this..

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  3. Ladies - it's a really inexpensive cut but it is jampacked full of flavour & goes such a long way - we got 5 dinners for two from one piece!

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  4. The last time I saw roasted pork look that delicious was when someone doing catering sydney served up a storm at our recent Christmas party. In fact, if I didn't know any better, I'd guess that he learned his skills from you.

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