Shoulder to Shoulder

So -- with John here for just a few more days, I couldn't resist the opportunity to cook more meat. A recent entry in the NYT column "The Minimalist" showed how easy it is to roast a whole shoulder of pork. So that's what we set out to do.

The first problem was finding a whole shoulder of pork. I did locate one but it was the day before we'd decided to commence with the roasting. So I let that go. And by the next day, we weren't able to locate a whole shoulder at the two supermarts that we got to. We ended up picking out a portion of shoulder that still had a substantial amount of bone in it and some skin on top. It ended up being a fortunate thing -- the cut we got was about 6 and a half pounds, substantially smaller than the original shoulder I located and we're still eating it after three days. The shoulder was actually amazingly affordable -- at a dollar a pound, it only cost us $6.50!

So -- the seasoning. We pureed half a large white onion and a red pepper. And just threw in some garlic, five-spice powder, salt and pepper, smeared it all over the meat, and just left the roast in the oven set at 300 F and let the low heat work its magic.

So the shoulder goes in at 3.10 pm.













And here's what it looks like after two hours. We took it out for its first watering and turning over.










And at about 6.15, we take it out again for another turn and watering. It's getting nice and brown now.












The final deal. We take it out at about 8 pm and let it rest a bit before slicing into it. The caramelized colors are just wonderful to look at.










We cut into it and serve it up with roasting new potatoes and carrots.

John and I ate significant portions (with snow chilled bottles of Heineken).

Edna, of course, didn't touch any of it, and ate fish sticks instead.