Roast pork shoulder
- Prepare
- less than 30 mins
- Cook
- over 2 hours
- Serve
- Serves 6–8
Master crispy crackling with this simple roast pork shoulder recipe. Pork shoulder needs a nice long time in the oven to become very tender, but on the flip-side it's very easy to cook this forgiving pork joint. Use our roast calculator to work out exact roast pork cooking times and temperatures.
Ingredients
- 2–2.5kg/4lb 8oz–5lb half pork shoulder, boned and rolled
- olive oil
- sea salt
- 3 onions, halved
- 2 carrots
For the apple sauce
- 3 Bramley apples, peeled, cored and roughly chopped
- 1 sprig rosemary, finely chopped
- demerara sugar, to taste
Method
Preheat the oven to 220C/200C Fan/Gas 7.
Using a very sharp knife (or a clean Stanley knife) score the skin all over in strips, taking care not to cut through to the meat (you can ask your butcher to do this for you if you like).
Drizzle the pork skin with a little olive oil and then massage a tablespoon salt into the skin, forcing it into the score marks.
Put the onions and carrots into a large roasting tin, drizzle with olive oil and shake around to coat. Sit the pork on top of the vegetables and place into the preheated oven. Cook for 30 minutes, or until the crackling is crisp and golden-brown.
Turn the oven down to 180C/160C Fan/Gas 4. Cook for 30 minutes per half kilo, or until the pork is cooked through (the juices will run clear when pierced with a knife. Alternatively, insert a skewer into the middle of the thickest part of the meat, remove and carefully feel the skewer. The meat is cooked if the skewer is too hot to touch.) It's hard to overcook pork shoulder, so feel free to give it longer if you are unsure.
While the pork is cooking, make the apple sauce. Put the apples in a saucepan with the rosemary and 50ml/1¾oz water. Cover and cook over a medium–low heat for 5 minutes, or until the apples have started to break down a little and soften.
Add 1–2 tablespoons sugar and cook for a further 5 minutes, stirring occasionally until the apples are collapsed but there is still a little texture to the apple sauce. Taste and adjust the sweetness if necessary. Leave to cool to room temperature.
Once the pork is cooked, remove from the oven and leave to rest covered in kitchen foil for 15–20 minutes.
Serve the pork and crackling sliced, with the apple sauce on the side.
Recipe tips
Before resting the meat, it's best to remove the cracking as it could loose some of it's crunch if covered with foil along with the steamy meat.
Cutting through the skin to make cracking can be tricky. Pat the skin dry using kitchen paper first. Use a sharp knife or a strong serrated knife to cut parallel lines into the skin (working in whatever direction feels easiest).
To get the best crackling it's worth drying out the pork skin ahead of time. There are many ways of doing this, but the key is to remove moisture from the skin before you cook the pork. The easiest option is to store the pork uncovered in the fridge for 24 hours.
If you get patches of skin that haven't crackled. Cut them off and place under a hot grill until they crisp up.
