6 Hour Slow Roast Shoulder of Pork

I wanted to make something impressive, but stress free when the in-laws to be came to dinner, and have Jamie Oliver to thank for a very successful dinner party. I decided to cook a shoulder of pork, really slow, so I set about on the internet looking for the best slow roast recipe and I came across Jamie Olivers, which involved leaving the crackling on till the end, making my life very easy. I added herbs for extra flavour. Though finding a shoulder of pork proved more difficult than thought. I ordered the shoulder from Nugents Butchers on Glasheen Road, and never expected when I went to pick it up on the day it would be so big. The lovely guys at Nugents cut up the pork for me to a size that would feed 10 adults and boned and tied it. They gave me the option of mincing some of the meat, dicing it, making sausages etc. I decided to get 2 smaller joints cut and scored and tied and vacuum packed and to portions of diced pork vacuum packed. Talk about value for your euro!!! They scored the meat as well, which is guaranteed to give the best crackling. I'm serving this pork with a sweet apricot stuffing and roast carrots, onions and potatoes.

Serves 10

Ingredients

• 3.5 kg pork shoulder, scored and boned.
• 3 tbsp of sea salt
• 1 tbsp of finely chopped rosemary
• 2 tbsp of thyme leaves
• Salt and Pepper

Vegetables

• 8 carrots, chopped chunky
• 16 potatoes, peeled and quartered, and par boiled.
• 2 cooking onions, quartered with skins on.
• 4 garlic cloves left in their skins

Apricot and Pinenut Stuffing

• 8 dried apricots
• 4 tbsp of pinenuts
• 100g of fresh breadcrumbs
• 4 tbsp of thyme leaves
• 1 cooking onion, diced
• 1 garlic clove, finely chopped

Method

1. Preheat your oven to 220 degrees
2. To prepare your meat, turn it upside down and season with salt and pepper.
3. Turn it over skin side up and generously rub in the sea salt, getting it right into the slashes.
4. Place in the oven for 30 minutes
5. After 30 minutes, remove the meat, turn the oven down to 170 degrees and cover the meat with a double layer of tin foil.
6. Cook for 4 and half hours.
7. Meanwhile to make the stuffing, simply sweat the diced onion and garlic on a low heat for 10 minutes.
8. Allow to cool completely. Add remaining stuffing ingredients to a food processor and blitz.
9. Combine the onions and garlic with the blitzed ingredients
10. Add to a loaf tin and cover with tin foil, and place in the oven for the last 30 minutes of cooking the meat.
11. Remove from the oven again after the 4.5 hours, take the pork out of the roasting tin and pour out the fat into a jug
12. Place chunky chopped carrots in the roasting tray and quartered cooking onions.
13. Place the pork back on top of the carrots and cook for further 20 minutes, uncovered.
14. Place quartered par cooked potatoes and garlic in their skins around the meat, and pour th ecooking fat over the meat and the potatoes and return to the oven for a final 40 minutes.
15. Remove the meat from the oven, cover with foil and allow to rest for 30 minutes.
16. Cover the vegetables with foil and keep warm in the oven.
17. Serve with some apricot and pinenut stuffing.
18. For easy serving cut the crackling off the meat and break up. Its difficult to slice the meat as its so tender and just breaks away, best to chop it up and serve it at the centre of the table for your guests to help themselves.