Method
- Remember to remove your pork shoulder from its packaging, then pat dry and bring to room temperature.
- Pre heat your oven to 200°C temperature fan assisted or 215°C without a fan.
- Season the joint just prior to roasting.
- Choose a large, heavy based roasting tray, ideally with deep sides and handles for easy movement and handling.
- Massage a little goose or duck fat or a light olive oil if the joint does not have a generous coating of fat then season with good quality fine sea salt.
- Make a trivet by roughly chopping equal amounts of onion, carrot and celery or my preferred choice of celeriac, the root of the celery plus a bay leaf, sprig of thyme and a few black peppercorns, another nice addition can be a bramley apple peeled and quartered to the trivet.
- We always place the pork skin side up onto the trivet which should line the base of the tray.
- Place in centre of oven and roast for 20 minutes then reduce the temperature to 190°C then continue roasting for 30 minutes per 500g reaching a core temperature of minimum 70°C.
- Remove from your roasted joint from the oven and pop onto a clean tray and keep warm by covering with a sheet of tin foil then resting for a minimum of 20 minutes before carving, leaving the roasted vegetables in the tray for the gravy.
- Then to finish off we move onto the gravy. We make up 500 ml of essential cuisine chicken stock, then de-glaze roasting tray with this stock stirring all the caramelized juices from the tray, then pass through a fine sieve pushing all the juices from the vegetables into a clean sauce pan, bring to the simmer and thicken if required by whisking in a teaspoon of corn flour mixed with a little cold water and reduce till you reach a rich glossy gravy.