Slow Roasted Pork Shoulder – Pear Ginger Sauce
Holiday season is roasting season!
Roasting is a sure and easy way to prepare a delicious main course meal that can feed a great number of people with minimal work for the cook. Roasting requires only a few simple steps that will ensure a delicious end result every time.
Once the roast is seasoned and prepared as per recipe, the oven does the rest of the work. This is a brilliant thing because now one can focus on the more elaborate and hands-on holiday foods that need to be made… such as desserts!
Below is a slow roasted shoulder of pork. This is an Italian recipe I’ve made several times and it is quite simple and very delicious.
The pear ginger sauce helps to add a nice degree of livening flavors that works extremely well with roasted pork shoulder.
Slow Roasted Pork Shoulder with Pear Ginger Sauce
(Serves: 12-15)
Ingredients: Pork Shoulder
- 6-7 lbs. – pork shoulder
- 10 – garlic cloves, peeled (medium)
- 3.5 oz. – fennel seeds
- 5-6 – chillies (dried)
- 5 – lemons (juiced)
- 3 tablespoons – olive oil
- 1 cup – white wine
- 1/2 – Stick of butter
- 2 tablespoons – Kosher salt
- 1 tablespoon – Black pepper (ground)
Turn oven on to 450°F and place the oven rack low enough in the oven so that the pork will not touch the top or be too close to the top of the oven while baking. This will ensure even roasting and make it easy to baste the roast while it is cooking.
Procedure:
- Score the flesh about 1/4 inch deep all over the roast. Make as many as 50 slits.
- Make a paste with the garlic, fennel seeds, salt, pepper, and the chillies.
This can be done quickly in a blender or food processor, pulsing the ingredients a few times to create a paste. You can also work all the ingredients to a paste using a kitchen knife, smashing and chopping the ingredients carefully until a paste is formed.
- Rub the paste all around the roast and massage it well into the cut areas.
- Heat a large saute pan on the stove top with a little olive oil. Once smoking hot, sear all sides of the roast to obtain a nice caramelized color evenly around. Once the pan is smoking hot, the heat may be adjusted to a slightly lower setting as to avoid burning and also to avoid creating too much smoke while searing the meat.
- Deglaze the pan that was used to sear the meat. First, tip out any excess oil and then add the white wine. Swirl around to lift up all caramelized bits (fond) from the bottom of the pan. Once the wine has lifted up all the bits and has reduced slightly, add the lemon juice and the half stick of butter. (Let cool and reserve this liquid.)
- Place the roast on a pre-heated roasting tray in the oven. Tray should be hot. Drizzle a small amount of olive oil over the skin side of the roast and then place in oven, skin side down, for 30 minutes.
- Then, turn the roast skin side up. Pour over the reserved wine, lemon, butter mixture and the 3 tablespoons of olive oil.
- Lower the oven to 250°F and let roast slowly from 6-10 hours basting 2-3 times every hour.
If the basting liquid eventually dries out, make some more in a pan quickly using the 5 juiced lemons-1 cup white wine-1/2 stick butter ratio. Baste the roast with about 2 -3 tablespoons of this mixture at a time.
Thirty minutes prior to removing the roast from the oven, stop basting to allow the skin to now crisp up nicely.
The skin (crackling) is just as important as important as the roast itself. So, do not remove the roast until the skin is super crispy and you can literally hear it crackling!
Let the roast rest on the stove top for about 20-30 minutes before carving.
Serve with the pear ginger sauce. (recipe below)
pear ginger sauce
Pear Ginger Sauce
Ingredients:
- 3 Tbsps cider vinegar
- 2 Tbsps sugar
- 2/3 cup white wine (dry)
- 1 cup chicken broth (reduced-fat)
- 1 Anjou pear (firm ripe Bosc pear or Anjou pear peeled cored and cut lengthwise into eighths)
- 1/4 cup fresh ginger (peeled and cut into thin julienne strips)
- 6 scallions (trimmed and sliced into 1/2 inch lengths)
- 2 tsps cornstarch
- 2 tsps water
Procedure:
- Add vinegar and sugar to the pan and stir to dissolve the sugar. Cook over medium-high heat until the syrup turns dark amber, 30 to 40 seconds. Pour in wine and bring to a simmer while stirring.
- Add broth, pears and ginger to the wine-vinegar mixture and bring to a simmer. Cook, uncovered, turning the pears occasionally, for 4 minutes. Add scallions and cook until the pears are tender, about 2 minutes more.
- Whisk together the water and cornstarch into a smooth slurry (a quick thickening agent ) and add to the pan. Stir until the sauce thickens.
- Serve immediately with the roast shoulder of pork.
Happy Holidays!