Sunday, September 30, 2012

Pork Shoulder Roast


I cannot stop talking about the pork shoulder roast! I don't know if we are blessed here in Portland, Oregon with unusually inexpensive pork cuts (I hazard to guess that we are not and that pork is generally somewhat inexpensive), but I frequently pick up a bone in shoulder for $.99 a lb. and if I get a four pounder, then that good sized chunk of meat feeds a dinner party of six or else it feeds me for a week. This dinner is easily listed in the economy meals section of any cooking publication.
Every year I go camping with a bunch of beautiful people and we plan a huge family dinner together out in the woods. I volunteered to brine and barbecue the pork shoulder roast as the best and most inexpensive way to feed my group of thirty people. Eyes lit up and smiles crooked and people started cheering when I mentioned that I could quit easily do barbecued pork tacos for the group. My vegetarian friends sat and silently yearned for my famous pork tacos.
So first thing I did was to keep an eye out for when the sale comes around and buy four big portions of the bone in pork shoulder roast. Each shoulder is somewhere around four pounds. Into the freezer they go until needed. Sure it takes a couple of days to thaw out, but with proper planning that is merely a fore thought. So the process starts many days before the camping trip actually begins.
The four hunks of pork shoulder roast were tossed into a basic brine, with some added chili flakes for twenty four hours. After I took the from the brine I patted them dry and put a little spicy, Mexican dry rub on them and tossed them on the barbecue with the coals shunted to the side to create indirect heat. After about an hour and a half I began to hover around the barbecue, occasionally prodding and probing the pork shoulder roast with me my meat thermometer.
I allowed the pork shoulder roast to reach 155 degrees, pulled it and allowed it to rest and cool. I then picked it apart and bagged the meat to go into the refrigerator until we departed for camp the next day. When the time came for dinner we brought out all the salsas, started frying corn tortillas, heated up the vegetarian black beans. I decanted the pork shoulder roast into a cast iron skillet, heated it up, and enjoyed a very lovely, delicious and inexpensive dinner out in the forest.

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