Shoulder pork is much fattier than the traditional leg that most people roast, and although that fat puts some people off, if you cook the meat for long enough, virtually all that fat will completely melt away magically turning into the most delightful flavour and really keeping all the meat super tender and succulent.
The piece of pork we cooked was about 5kg and we found that it would have easily fed around 20 people- we had lots of lunch for the following week! So we think it would be great for a big family celebration such as Mother's Day (where Jamie cooked kale and beans we did roast potatoes and greens!) or perfect for a big garden party with just buns and salad for people to help themselves. If you do fancy trying this with a smaller piece of pork, say a kilo less, I would knock a couple of hours off of the total cooking time.
Ingredients
2 tablespoons fennel seeds crushed | 1 fennel bulb roughly chopped | 1 tablespoon sea salt | 2-3 medium carrots roughly chopped | 2 onions peeled and roughly chopped | 1 bulb garlic cloves smashed | bunch of fresh thyme | 5kg piece of high welfare shoulder pork (ask for a piece left on the bone and scored) | olive oil | a bottle of white wine | 500 ml chicken stock
1 | Preheat your oven to its maximum temperature. 2 | Place your vegetables in a large baking tray
3 | Place your piece of pork on top, skin side up, cover in olive oil and massage the fennel seeds and salt into the skin and gaps where it has been scored.
4 | Place in the oven for about 20 minutes until the skin has really started to crisp up. If it looks like the vegetables are starting to burn, add a glass of water.
5 | Turn the oven down to 120C and cook for 6 hours. 6 | Remove the pork from the oven and add the bottle of wine to the dish. Let this cook away for another hour, occasionally basting the meat with the sauce to let the flavour of the wine soak into the meat and keep it nice and tender.
7 | Take the pork from the tray and let it rest for half an hour to an hour covered in lots of foil and a tea towel to keep the heat in. 8 | Meanwhile pour the sauce into a pyrex jug, let settle and remove the fat from the top. Place in a saucepan with the stock and let this cook down into a lovely gravy.
9 | When it comes to carving the meat, just take your time and remove from the bone. The meat really will fall away, so don't worry, no tricky butchery involved! Maybe break up the crackling first and set to one side then you really can take a fork and just pull away at it.
I really hope you enjoy this recipe as much as we all did, it was such a pleasure to cook as it was so easy and the smells coming from the oven all day were out of this world! And of course it tasted heavenly! Any questions that I haven't already answered in the instructions send me an email at shop@andrewsqualitybutchers.co.uk
