Puddledub Pork & Fifeshire Bacon, Clentrie Farm, Auchtertool, Fife, Scotland.

Slow Roast Shoulder of Pork

Slow Roast

Slow Roast

Slow Roast

Slow Roast

  • 1 shoulder of pork about 1.8 kg
  • 12 garlic cloves
  • 100g / 4oz fennel seeds
  • black pepper
  • rock salt
  • 4 or 5 dried red chillies
  • the juice of 6 lemons
  • 4 tablespoons olive oil

The shoulder is ideal for long slow cooking since it has good covering of fat.

It’s ideal as a lazy Sunday lunch dish since all the work is done the night before!

Method

  1. Have a hot oven ready gas 8 230C. Make slashes all the way across the skin. I use a stanley knife since you can set the blade to a half inch depth and it wont go any deeper. The slashes should be about half a centimetre apart, but Puddledub will also do this for you.
  2. Peel the garlic and crush it with the fennel in a pestle and mortar then add the chillies and crush lightly, mix in salt and pepper.
  3. Rub this mixture all over the slashed skin of the shoulder and roast on a rack in the hot oven for about half an hour. This should be enough time to blister the skin and it should start to go brown.
  4. Mix half the lemon juice with 2 spoons of the oil and pour all over the meat. Reduce the heat to gas 2 120C, or the simmering oven of an Aga and leave either overnight or all day certainly at least 8 hours. Turn the meat occasionally and baste with more lemon and oil.
  5. To complete the dish, the meat is ready when it falls off the bone or is soft under the skin which should be crisp. The juices left in the pan provide the sauce, either add the remaining lemon juice or oil to get the right taste, and pour over the meat as you serve it in slices.