Cook Pork Shoulder Blade Roast

Cook Pork Shoulder Blade Roast

• The blade or in some regions known as Boston butt is the upper portion of the front shoulder, the lower shoulder portion is called the picnic.

• Meat form the blade is relatively fatty making for juicy and flavorful roasts when cooked long and slow.

• Very succulent and tender, this particular roast does not mind being cooked to well done due to its internal marbling. A whole pork shoulder blade roast weighs about 9-10 pounds (4-5 kg).

• Enhanced or seasoned pork is becoming more and more popular in grocery stores in the United States and Canada. If the pork you have purchased is enhanced do not use a brine solution or add any salt to the recipe.

PREPARATIONS :

• 1.Remove roast from refrigerator one hour before cooking to bring to room temperature.

• 2.Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 275 degrees. Season roast generously with salt and pepper.

• 3.In a dutch oven or stock pot heat 2 tablespoons of oil on medium high heat 3-4 minutes. Brown all sides of the roast about 1½-2 minutes per side. A heavy skillet can also be use to brown the roast. Remove the roast from pot to a plate.

• 4.Now this is where you can experiment with different flavors and spices. Try stirring in chopped onions, celery, garlic to the pot on medium heat until beginning to brown 3-4 minutes. Stir in a ¼ cup of liquid (chicken broth, wine, soup, water etc.) scraping the bottom of pan with spoon to loosen brown bits.

Below are some excellent rub and spice recipes for cooking pork shoulder.

• 5.Return roast back to the pot and add enough liquid to come about 1/3 up the side of the roast. Cover with lid, bring to a simmer over medium heat and then transfer pot to the oven.

• 6.Cook, turning roast every 45 minutes for 3½-4 hours, until a fork slices easily in and out of the meat.

• 7.Transfer the boston pork roast from the pot, tent with tinfoil 20-30 minutes before carving or let cool down before pulling apart.

GRILL PORK SHOULDER BLADE ROAST

INGREDIENTS :

1 lb. blade or chuck roast
2 or 3 tbsp. olive oil
1 sm. onion, chopped
1/2 lb. ground sirloin
1/2 lb. ground pork
3-4 med. tomatoes
1-2 tbsp. chili powder
1 c. red wine
3 c. cooked kidney beans (or 2 - 15 1/2 oz. cans, rinsed & drained)
1/2 lb. cheddar cheese, grated
Salt & freshly ground pepper
Pinch cayenne pepper

PREPARATIONS :

• 1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Place the blade or chuck roast in a small roasting pan and roast until well done, 30 to 40 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool. Cut the meat into chunks.

• 2. In a large saucepan or stock pot, heat the olive oil over moderately high heat. Add the onions and cook until soft, about 5 minutes, then add the ground sirloin and the ground pork. Saute until all traces of pink have disappeared, about 5 minutes. Add the beef chunks and heat through.

• 3. Peel, seed and chop the tomatoes. Add to the pot, along with the chili powder and the wine. Bring to a boil over moderate high heat, then reduce the heat to moderate and simmer until the flavors are blended, about 15 minutes. Stir in the beans, cheese and 1 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon black pepper and cayenne pepper. Reduce the heat to low and simmer, covered, until the chili is thick and rich, at least 2 hours. Stir frequently to prevent scorching. Taste and adjust the seasoning as needed. Serve hot. Serves 8. Each Serving: about 595 calories, 41 g fat, 115 mg cholesterol, 760 mg sodium.

PORK SHOULDER BLADE ROAST RECIPE

RECIPE 1  : Pork Shoulder with Salsa Verde

• Roasting the meat for almost seven hours makes it tender and succulent. The bright, fresh salsa verde is the perfect accent for the rich meat. Enjoy.

INGREDIENTS :
(Salva Verde)

3 anchovy fillets shopping list
 1 garlic clove, peeled shopping list
 3/4 cup chopped fresh Italian parsley shopping list
 1/3 cup (lightly packed) chopped fresh celery leaves shopping list
 1 1/2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice shopping list
 1 tablespoon finely grated lemon peel shopping list
 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar shopping list
 1 1/2 teaspoons chopped fresh rosemary shopping list
 1 1/2 teaspoons chopped fresh sage shopping list
 1/2 cup olive oil

(Pork Shoulder)
6 garlic cloves, minced shopping list
2 tablespoons chopped fresh sage shopping list
2 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary shopping list
1 tablespoon coarse kosher salt shopping list
2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper shopping list
1 tablespoon olive oil shopping list
1 8-pound whole bone-in pork shoulder roast (Boston butt)

PREPARATIONS:
(Salsa Verde)

• With processor running, drop anchovies and garlic through feed tube and finely chop. Scrape down sides of bowl.

• Add parsley, celery leaves, lemon juice, lemon peel, red wine vinegar, chopped rosemary, and chopped sage. Using on/off turns, process until almost smooth.

• With machine running, gradually add olive oil. Transfer salsa verde to bowl. Season with salt and pepper.

Note: Can be made 1 day ahead. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate.

(Pork Shoulder)

• Position rack in lowest third of oven; preheat to 450°F.

• Mix garlic, sage, rosemary, coarse kosher salt, and freshly ground black pepper in small bowl.

• Brush oil all over pork, then rub spice mixture all over.

• Place pork on rack set in roasting pan. Roast 20 minutes.

• Reduce heat to 300°F and continue to roast until instant-read thermometer inserted into center registers 185°F, about 6 1/2 hours.

• Remove pork from oven; tent with foil to keep warm. Let rest 15 minutes.

• Cut into 1/2-inch-thick pieces and serve with salsa verde alongside.

RECIPE 2 : Pernil Aka Roast Pork Shoulder

• Delicious Spanish-style pulled pork. I'm not sure how authentic this is, but it's how I'm making it today in my usual "take a little direction from several different recipes" style of cooking. Prep time includes overnight marinating.

INGREDIENTS :
3-5 lb pork shoulder- If using larger roast, increase ingredients accordingly shopping list
2 packets Goya Sazon con culantro y achiote shopping list
adobo seasoning with or without pimiento, to taste shopping list
2-3 cloves garlic, crushed shopping list
1/4 cup olive or corn oil shopping list
1 tsp oregano shopping list
1 tsp fresh ground pepper shopping list
aluminum foil

PREPARATIONS :

PREPARATION THE NIGHT BEFORE- Rinse meat in cold water and pat dry

With a sharp knife stab meat several times to make 3-4" slits.

Go ahead, stab it good now- I also cut right underneath the fat layer of the roast to season later

Season with Adobo all over outside of meat, to your liking

In a small bowl/mixing cup mix oil, 1 packet of Sazon, oregano, pepper, and mashed garlic, until a chunky thick liquid forms

Insert about 1-2 tsp of this mixture per hole you previously stabbed, and rub some underneath fat layer

Sprinkle rest of the Sazon over entire roast

Put in a Ziplock bag or covered bowl and refrigerate overnight

THE NEXT MORNING-Preheat oven to 400

Take out roast and let sit for at least 20 minutes, while oven is heating

Put roast fat side up on top of rack in roasting pan

Bake at 400 for 30 minutes, to brown meat

Turn down to 250 degrees, cover with foil, and cook for 6 1/2 hours or until done, check after 4 hours, meat should fall apart pretty easily

Let cool a bit so you don't burn

Shred pork with two forks

PORK SHOULDER BLADE ROAST

THE RECIPE :

• Very few things in life are as good, or as simple as roast pork. The bachelor party tradition among my group of friends is to spit-roast a pig over charcoal. We recently went in on a roaster and put it through it’s paces before my wedding. Spending the afternoon hanging out and watching the pig spin is as near a perfect Saturday as I can imagine. The beauty of roasting pork is that you really don’t have to do much of anything to it, you just have to be very patient and let it get there in it’s own time. Even if you only rub it with salt, it will be fantastic. A few well chosen herbs and spices can make it even better, but you don’t want to overwhelm the awesome goodness that is roast pork. This recipe comes pretty close to replicating what I love about a whole rotisserie pig. If you don’t happen to have a giant roasting pit, or twenty friends to help you eat a whole pig, an oven roasted pork shoulder is a good way to go.

• In this recipe starts with an 8 lb skin on picnic shoulder. The higher end grocery stores in my neighbourhood never carry these (one of them doesn’t carry any part of a pig or cow forward of the tenderloin), but they’re a staple at the more budget minded stores. At a dollar a pound, I can’t afford not to cook with pork shoulder. You start by stabbing 1 inch incisions in the skin with a very very sharp knife. This is by far the hardest part of the recipe, but it’s a nice way to get some aggression out. You then fill these incisions with a mixture of lime juice, garlic, salt, oregano, and cumin. More of the mixture gets rubbed onto the meat not covered with skin. The pork goes into the oven, with lime juice drizzled around it. The recipe asks for a roasting pan, but I used a dutch oven, which worked out just fine. After 30 minutes water and vinegar are added to the pan, and it’s left to roast covered for two hours, basting halfway through, and making sure not to get the precious cracklings wet. You then separate the skin from the meat, and roast uncovered for another hour and a half, basting under the skin every 20 minutes. When the skin is crackly and crisp you remove the roast and let it stand for 20 minutes, then carve. It’s served with the defatted pan juices, and cracklings.

 THE GOOD :

• This tastes absolutely fantastic. The meat is rich and succulent, mildly flavoured by the spices, but not so much as to distract you from the porcine bullet to the taste centers of your brain. The cracklings were out of this world. They turned a perfect mahogany, and with an extra sprinkle of salt became the perfect indulgence. Other than getting through the pig skin, the recipe was dead simple, used very easy to find ingredients, and even the poorest students can afford to make it.

THE BAD :

• Preparing this can be a little dangerous. If you don’t have wickedly sharp knives, they’re likely to turn on you when trying to get through the skin. I nearly cut myself. A double edged knife, dagger, shiv, or any other type of stabbing weapon would probably be a lot safer. This recipe also takes quite a long time (count on five hours from start to finish), and sitting around the oven drinking beer has less appeal than the hypnotic rotation of a pig on the spit. That said, there’s very little intervention needed on your part. Making this again I would try to slice it. It kind of fell apart and came away in chunks. It’s basically pulled pork, so why not pull it? Next time I’ll pull the meat, and toss it with a little of the pan juices.

THE VERDICT :

• Eight dollars resulted in a fantastic dinner, and out of this world sandwiches for two for most of a week. Beat that. There are amazing things that can be done with pork shoulder, but a lot of them require special equipment, or more intervention on your part than this dish. If you do have a charcoal grill, this dish would probably be even better with long slow offset cooking, regular basting, and some smoke. But turning on the oven sure is a lot simpler, and nearly as delicious.

PORK SHOULDER ROAST CRAKLING : 

INGREDIENTS :
2kg bone-in shoulder of pork, skin on
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 red onions, halved
2 carrots, peeled and halved lengthways
2 sticks of celery, halved
1 bulb of garlic, skin on, broken into cloves
6-8 fresh bay leaves
600ml water or vegetable stock

PREPARATIONS :

• This is a proper old-school Sunday roast with crackling. Leaving the bone in adds a bit of extra flavour and having a layer of fat helps to keep the meat nice and moist as it roasts. This isn’t the kind of joint you carve into neat slices. If you’ve cooked it right, it should pull apart into shreds with a couple of forks. If you’re worried about scoring the crackling yourself, ask your butcher to do it for you, that’s what he’s there for.

Preheat your oven to 220°C/425°F/gas 7.

• Place your pork on a clean work surface, skin-side up. Get yourself a small sharp knife and make scores about a centimetre apart through the skin into the fat, but not so deep that you cut into the meat. If the joint is tied, try not to cut through the string. Rub salt right into all the scores you’ve just made, pulling the skin apart a little if you need to.

• Brush any excess salt off the surface then turn it over. Season the underside of the meat with a few pinches of salt and pepper. Place your pork, skin side-up, in a roasting tray and pop in the preheated oven. Roast for 30 minutes, until the skin of the pork has started to puff up and you can see it turning into crackling. At this point, turn the heat down to 170°C/325 F/gas3, cover the pork snugly with a double layer of tin foil, pop back in the oven and roast for a further 4 and a half hours.

• Take out of the oven take the foil off, and baste the meat with the fat in the bottom of the tray. Carefully lift the pork up and transfer to a chopping board. Spoon all but a couple of tablespoons of fat out (save it for roast potatoes!)

• Add all the veg, garlic and bay leaves to the tray and stir them into the fat. Place the pork back on top of everything and return to the ove sithout the foil to roast for another hour. By this time the meat should be meltingly soft and tender.

• Carefully move the meat to a serving dish, cover again with tin foil and leave to rest while you make your gravy. Spoon away any fat in the tray, then add the water or stock and place the tray on the hob. Bring to the boil and simmer for a few minutes, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon to scrape up all those lovely sticky tasty bits on the bottom of the tray. When you’ve got a nice, dark gravy,pour it through a sieve into a bowl or gravy boat, using your spoon to really push all the goodness of the veg through the sieve. Add a little more salt and pepper if it needs it.

• Serve the pork and crackling with your jug of gravy and some lovely roast potatoes (As a treat you can try roasting them in the fat you spooned out of your roasting tray. Some stewed red cabbage and a dollop of apple sauce will finish this off perfectly).

COOK PORK LOIN RIB ROAST

INGREDIENTS :

1 loin of pork (about 6 lbs.)
3 tsp. salt
1 tsp. freshly ground pepper
1 tsp. dried thyme
1/2 tsp. grated nutmeg
2 carrots, chopped in thirds
2 med. onions, peeled and thinly sliced
1 garlic clove, crushed
2 whole cloves
2 celery ribs, chopped
1 bay leaf
1 1/4 c. dry white wine
1 1/4 c. beef stock
1/2 lemon
1/2 c. water

PREPARATIONS:

• Preheat oven to 475 degrees. Wipe meat with a damp cloth and rub it with a mixture of the salt, pepper, thyme and nutmeg. Arrange carrots, onions, garlic cloves, celery and bay leaf over the bottom of a roasting pan. Put the roast on top of the vegetables. Pour 1/2 cup each of the wine and stock over the roast. Put roast in oven and bake for 20 minutes, until roast is golden brown. Reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees and cook for 3 to 4 hours, basting occasionally.

• Fifteen minutes before roast is done, transfer to a hot platter and squeeze the lemon over it. Return to the oven while making the gravy. Pour off fat from the roasting pan and add the remaining stock and wine. Boil rapidly, stirring and scraping the bottom and sides of pan. Cook until gravy is thickened and only about one cup remains. Strain. Serve meat hot and the gravy in a separate dish.

BONE IN PORK LOIN ROAST RECIPE

INGREDIENTS:

1 bone-in pork loin (about 3 1/2 pounds)
24 very thin slivers of garlic (from 1 or 2 cloves), plus 1 teaspoon finely chopped garlic
1 teaspoon finely ground fennel seeds
2 teaspoons coarse salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper

 INTRODUCTION :

• The technique for adding more flavor to this pork roast is similar to larding, except that instead of fat, garlic and ground fennel seed are inserted into slits in the meat. Fennel is commonly used to season pork (think of sweet Italian sausages), but fresh rosemary or sage is also appropriate; chop the herbs to insert into the slits and then chop some more to season the rest of the meat. Roast beef is especially nice when larded with garlic and herbs in this way.
• We used a pork loin that was about 3 1/2 pounds and 7 inches long, with 5 bones. Have the butcher French the bones for you and cut the chine bones so the loin can be easily cut into chops after roasting.

 STEP 1 : MAKE SLITS

• Heat oven to 450 degrees. Use a sharp knife to make 24 slits evenly all over pork, including the ends, and insert a sliver of garlic and a small pinch of ground fennel seed into each one.

 STEP 2 : CUT PORK

• Holding knife against the bones, cut about 2 inches down to separate meat from the bone to create a pocket, leaving the bottom portion intact.

 STEP 3 : SEASON PORK

• Season inside the pocket with salt and pepper, then add chopped garlic and about 1/4 teaspoon fennel seed, spreading evenly.

STEP 4 : TIE PORK

• Tie roast closed with kitchen twine. Season generously with salt and pepper.

 STEP 6 : SERVE PORK

• Remove from oven and let rest for 10 minutes to allow the internal temperature to rise to 140 (we find this is the optimal temperature for pork that is juicy and very slightly pink; if you are concerned, cook pork to 140 and it will rise to 150).