Slow roast pork

I reckon this is my new standard way of slow roasting a joint of pork such as shoulder, belly or hock.  Bone-in shoulder seems very exciting to me (e.g. https://thegingerpig.co.uk/products/bone-in-pork-shoulder).

Ingredients

Joint of pork
Salt
Pepper
Vegetable oil
Onions
Garlic
Bay leaf
Thyme
Cider, wine or water

Technique

Score the pork fat deeply with a Stanley or other sharp knife, without cutting through to the flesh beneath.  Season well with salt and pepper.  Wrap in a tea towel and leave in the fridge overnight.

The day you wish to cook it, bring it out of the fridge as early as you can so it can come to room temperature.

Massage lightly with 1 tbsp of veg oil and place in a tray with the fat upwards.  Season again.  To the tray, add 2 onions, washed and quartered but skin left on and a few whole peeled garlic cloves.

Place straight into a low oven at say 160C.  The length of time to cook it is very flexible, but for a 3kg shoulder of pork I would want to give it probably 3 hours at this temperature.

After half an hour to 1 hour, spoon off excess fat from the tray and add the liquid and herbs.  During these initial slow roasting hours, you need to check every now and then that the liquid does not dry up.  Basting is optional.

After the initial hours phase, remove it from the oven and turn your oven up to max temperature. Add plenty of liquid to the tray because you can always reduce it later and you really don't want your lovely gravy to burn.

Add the pork back and roast at this high temperature to allow the cracking to fully form.  This may take another 20-40 minutes.

Rest the meat for 20 minutes minimum and job is done.

I guess what I am getting at is, pouring boiling water over the fat the day before is not a vital step.

Pork shin, chorizo and red pepper stew

This takes about 10 minutes to throw together before just being left to simmer away, and heats up easily during a week to serve with freshly cooked pasta.  Pretty basic but I think it's great!  I've done a similar lamb and bean stew before that works the same... I gotta blog about that one!

Serves approx 6


4 sections of pork shin cut in the style of osso bucco
500g pork ribs
1 large spicy chorizo sausage, sliced into 1 inch sections
3 tbsp olive oil
5 large cloves of garlic, chopped
1 jar roast red peppers
1 ~700g jar of passata or soffrito
1/2 tbsp flakey salt
Ground black pepper
2 cans canellini beans (or 1 jar of pre-cooked Spanish white beans called Alubias)
Pasta to serve with

In a very large casserole dish, heat the oil then brown the meat.  First the pork, then the chorizo which you may be able to just add to the pork leaving everything in there.  You don't strictly have to brown each piece of meat perfectly in this instance, it's just good to take the meat, and the browning which will gather on the bottom of the dish, to the right stage overall.  You certainly don't want to keep going until anything burns.

Add the garlic, season heavily with pepper and stir over a heat to fry the garlic without burning.  This takes around 30 seconds.

Add the passata or soffrito, the red peppers roughly sliced, salt and water to cover.  Bring to a boil, skim off any scum that gathers on the surface, reduce the heat to a very low simmer and cover, or partially cover, for 2 hours.  If you have a very low heat setting on your hob then you can fully cover it.  Otherwise partially covering the casserole should stop the contents from boiling too hard.

Drain the beans, wash them and add them for a final half an hour.

Whenever you wish to serve a portion, half cook pasta in boiling water then add to the stew to finish cooking in there.  Taste for salt before serving.  Again kale would be nice with this in a caldo-verde way.  See pork with cider onions and cloves blog for how to cook.

Pork braised with cider, onions and cloves

This was a regular on the menu of The Earl Spencer in Southfields where I briefly worked in 2010.  I'm not sure where the recipe came from, and I never saw it cooked there, so I have sort-of made this recipe up.  But it works really well.

Waitrose sell thick pork belly slices which have had the skin removed from them, which are great for this.

Serves 4

600g pork belly slices (see above), cut into 1.5 inch cubes
500ml clear, dry, probably sparkling cider
2 tbsp cider vinegar
3 onions, halved vertically, peeled then sliced very finely across the grain
2 tbsp vegetable oil
20g butter
5 cloves
4cm stick of cinnamon
1 dried red chilli
2 bay leaves
Salt and pepper

In your largest, widest and heaviest frying pan, heat a thin film of oil.  Season the pork pieces with pepper then lightly colour them in batches in this pan.  Adjust the heat up or down as you need to, to keep things moving along.  A frying splash preventer is very handy for this stage.

Meanwhile in a large casserole dish sweat the onions in the fats until lightly coloured, stirring regularly.

When each batch of pork is cooked, remove it to a plate then pour excess oil from the pan.  Deglaze the pan with the cider, scraping the base with a wooden spoon and allowing to simmer.

When the onions are done assemble everything in the casserole dish, including any juices that have come from the meat, and salt well.  Adjust the heat to a very low simmer indeed, and simmer with the lid adjar for 1.5-2 hours.  This should allow the sauce to reduce to a nice concentration by the time the pork is tender.  If it needs to reduce further simply remove the lid completely for the final half hour of cooking.  Pick out all herbs and spices before serving - remembering how many cloves you added.

Serve with kale and steamed potatoes.  The trick(s) to cooking kale is to remove all bits of stem, soak in cold water for 10 minutes in advance of cooking, then cook for 3 minutes in a large volume of rapidly boiling and heavily salted water.

Roast pork shoulder in pictures

Again, I wrote up this procedure a couple of years ago in depth but I think in this case the pictures make things a lot easier.  I confess it has evolved a little as well.  I cannot recommend this way of cooking pork highly enough.

Start the day before you wish to eat the pork, and score the skin all the way across with a sharp knife, cutting well down into the fat but not into the meat.  A Stanley knife is best but you will see here I've used a carving knife - it can be done!  This is a boned, rolled shoulder of pork with a good layer of fat.

Place on an upturned colander in a sink and
empty a kettle/pan full of boiling water over it.

Wrap in a tea towel in the fridge overnight to dry out.

Remove in the morning, salt and rub into the
cracks and leave for a couple of hours.

Make a 'vegetable trivet' for the meat to sit on.  Here thickly sliced onions,
whole peeled garlic cloves, bay leaves and thyme.

Season well with pepper and rub the skin with lemon juice.
Place on top and pour a large glass of water into the tray.

Wrap in a parcel of tin foil and tie up with string.
Place into the oven for 5 hours at 140c.

Remove the foil and whack your oven up to its maximum temperature.  When it has reached that temperature put the tray back in, uncovered, being sure there is enough liquid in the tray for things not to dry up and burn.

Check after 20 minutes for crackling formation without burning.
Rest the meat for 25 minutes.

Done.  I served this with dauphinoise potatoes, kale,
 apple sauce, mustard and gravy, which is made by
simmering down (reducing) the nectar from the tray.

Grilled pork chops with Roquefort and sage butter

It is definitely worth investing in a heavy, ridged and cast iron stove-top grill pan.  See picture below for an example.

Grilled pork chops with Roquefort and sage butter

Serves 2

2 pork chops, bone in, 1 inch thickness.  Look for good marbling of the meat and even cutting of the chop.  Should be bought from a butchers or good supermarket meat counter.
Oil and seasoning

For the butter:

50g salted butter.  Cut into peices and leave at room temperature for 10 minutes to soften.
50g Roquefort cheese
1tsp very finely chopped washed sage leaves (measured when chopped).  Take time to chop them finely.
Generous pepper
A little salt

To make the butter, place all ingredients into a small bowl and mash together with a fork.

Place the chops on a plate.  Rub with oil then season both sides well.  Leave for 30 mins ideally to come to room temperature.

Pre-heat the grill ie. leave the pan over a high heat for 5 minutes.

Pre-heat the oven to 190C.

Lay on the chops, turn the heat down slighly and leave them for around 4 minutes.  Listen for the right intensity of cooking.

Once they are well browned, turn them over and brown the other side before placing into the oven to finish cooking.  The key to how long this next stage will take is the thickness of the chop.  If they are 1 inch you will need to leave them in the oven for around 12 minutes.  I once bought a big packet of pork chops from a supermarket and ate them all week, pan frying them.  I found that by the last one I had got the hang of cooking them so they were thoroughly cooked but not dried out.

Remove from the oven to rest, still in the grill pan, for 4 minutes.

A couple of minutes before serving smear a tablespoon of the butter on each chop with a knife.  Serve onto a plate, tilt the grill pan and spoon most of the fat away but there should be some lovely gravy to also pour over the chops.  Let's be honest we want chips with this.

Roast belly of pork

Obviously, crackling is everything.  But to acheive perfection, more important than any of the details in the recipe that follows is that you make friends with your butcher and persuade him to seek out and reserve for you the fattest pig belly at his market.  We are talking a good inch of fat, at the thickest point.  The other reason it must be a butchers to which you go, is that it simply won’t work to try and roast a small belly joint, such as those sold in the supermarket.  These smaller, and invariably leaner, joints are great braised with onions, cider and cloves.  But roasted?  Definitely not.  Use a Stanley knife for the scoring, even if you have to go and buy one specially.  No kitchen knife will do the job anywhere near as well.

This technique is a combination of an article written by Simon Hopkinson for Waitrose magazine, and advice given by Justin Aubrey, head chef at the newly opened Perseverance, in Shroton Street, Marylebone.

The pork is delicious served with dauphinoise potatoes, apple sauce, kale and gravy.  A gravy recipe is given below.  It is also superb party food, with floury buns and apple sauce being all you need to worry about.

Roast belly of pork

A large belly of pork (a fine size is half a side of belly), with a thick covering of fat; onions; carrots; celery; thyme; lemon juice; salt; pepper.

Score fully across the belly at 5mm intervals with a Stanley knife, cutting deep into the fat but not through to the meat.  Place the joint on an upturned colander in a sink, and empty a kettle full of boiling water over the joint to open up the scorings.  Leave to dry wrapped tightly in a tea towel in the fridge overnight, or if in a rush you can use a hairdryer.

To eat the pork in the evening, remove from the fridge first thing in the morning to allow it to come up to room temperature.  Salt the joint generously, rubbing into the scores, and leave for a few hours.

Create a ‘veg trivet’ in the base of a large roasting tray by peeling and quartering a few onions, carrots and celery sticks.  Add sprigs of thyme which will infuse the meat.  Pour in a tablespoon of vegetable oil and ensure the veg are coated.

Season the joint with pepper, and place on your veg trivet.  Massage some lemon juice onto the fat (all the recipes saying you need a perfectly dry skin are wrong) and place into the centre of a preheated oven at 140C.  The hot oven crackling phase comes afterwards...

After roughly four hours remove the joint and whack your oven up to maximum temperature.  Once it is up to temperature place the joint back into the oven and leave for 20 minutes.  Check at this stage for crackling formation.  You may need to turn the joint around to ensure even crackling formation without burning in the hottest part of the oven, like baking a cake.

Once you are happy with the crackling, and you must be bold in allowing it to form, remove and rest the joint on a board for 30 minutes.  I generally remove the crackling in one piece after resting to facilitate carving.  Season the meat with fine salt once carved.

Gravy

The veg of your trivet and around the joint will inevitably burn during cooking (although thinking about it you could potentially do the slow phase with the tray covered with foil to create steam but anyway), to be safe I like to make a separate gravy, if one is required, using this technique and a few strips of belly pork bought at the same time.  This is certainly a recipe to be carried out with one’s senses rather than to the letter!  But it’s easy really.

3 pork belly strips, 3 slices streaky bacon, butter, onion, carrot, celery, red wine, thyme, bay leaves, crabapple (or redcurrent) jelly

In a deep casserole (le creuset is ideal, non-stick is not), brown the bacon pieces in some butter, then add the belly slices in large cubes.  You can brown it over a flame or in the oven, but what you are looking for is to take the caramelisation of the meat, partly on the bottom of the pan, to the right stage.  Well browned but not burnt.  

Remove excess fat with a spoon or pour off, then add finely sliced onion, seasoning with salt and scraping up the browning residues, again taking the onion to a full stage of colour.  Add chopped carrot and celery and sweat again to sweeten.  Over a lower heat add a tablespoon of flour and stir together to cook the flour, before adding a large glass of red wine.  Simmer and reduce slightly before covering with water and adding a large bunch of thyme, two bay leaves and a tablespoon of jelly.  Skim off the inevitable scum that will form as you bring to a boil, then simmer slowly for at least one hour while the pork cooks.

Pour the whole lot into a colander over a clean pan.  Wash the solids with a glass of water, push down with a ladle then discard.  Season the liquid with pepper at this stage and reduce until the consistency is good.  Finish with a further splash of red wine to help the colour and freshness, taste and adjust for balance of flavours: saltiness, sweetness, acidity and concentration.