Ultra-Crispy Slow-Roasted Pork Shoulder Recipe (2024)

Why It Works

  • Starting the pork in a low oven breaks down tough connective tissue.
  • Finishing the pork in high heat rapidly crisps up the skin.

Remember in the first season of Thundercats when Lion-o had to prove himself as the true Lord of New Thundera by battling each of the other cats in their own game? After he proves himself stronger than Panthro, beats Cheetara in a race, outwiles the ThunderKittens WilyKit and WilyKat in the Maze of Infinity, and overcomes Tygra's mental projections to face his greatest fear, you think that the whole thing is over and you can finally rest easy.

Ultra-Crispy Slow-Roasted Pork Shoulder Recipe (1)

But no, Lion-o's anointment comes back with a vengeance as he is forced to face none other than Mumm-ra himself on the fifth day.

Well, we've tackled whole roastedsuckling pig, not just one, buttwo versions of all-belly porchetta(onecooked sous-vide and deep fried),andacrown roastof pork.Surely our adventures in Swineville are over, you thought.

Nope. Here, we're going to talk about what is perhaps the greatest of all bits of culinary alchemy. The transformation of one of the cheapest cuts of meat in the butcher's display case into one of the most glorious festive centerpieces imaginable.

We're talkingpork butt, in all of it's juicy, porky, spoon-tender in the middle, impossibly crisp and crusty-on-the-outside glory.

What Is Pork Butt?

First off, a quick word on nomenclature. Pork butt is not pork butt.Let me explain.

See, at some point in our colonial past, Boston was well known for its pork production and would often ship preserved pork (most often front shoulders—the least desirable part of the hog—but often hams and heads as well) in large wooden barrels. These barrels were of the size officially known as "butt" or "pipe." That'd be a 126 gallon barrel half the size of a 252 gallon tun, larger than a 84 gallon firkin, and twice the size of a 63 gallon hogshead (which, incidentally, have nothing to do with actual hogs or heads).

The pork-filled barrels shipped out across the country came to be known as Boston Butts, a term which was soon applied to the meat inside, despite the fact that it actually came from the shoulder of the hog. These days, conventions in many parts of the country still refer to the pork shoulder as Boston butt, though in many cities (including Boston itself), they're known as just plain "butt."

Had our forebears deigned to ship pork in 84 gallon barrels, we might have found ourselves spooning slow-cooked pulled Boston firkin into our BBQ sandwiches, perhaps making our Italian sausages out of Boston puncheon, or if those shoulders were shipped to New Mexico via 18 gallon barrels, they'd be chowing down on chile verde made out of Boston rundlet.

Ultra-Crispy Slow-Roasted Pork Shoulder Recipe (2)

With that out of the way, let's talk aboutwhat is actually inside a Boston butt... er, shoulder.

A full bone-in Boston butt is a formidable piece of meat, usually weighing in at around eight to twelve pounds, riddled with a significant amount of connective tissue and inter/intramuscular fat, all swathed in a thick, tough skin.

Our goal is tomake this tough piece of meat spoonably tender.How do you do that? Well, you cook it.

  • Fast twitch muscleis the stuff that the animal rarely uses except in short bursts. The breasts on a chicken that let it flap its wings rapidly when escaping danger. The loins on a cow that, well, barely get used at all. Fast twitch muscle is characterized by tenderness (think chicken breast, pork chops, or New York strip steaks) and finely textured grain and is best cooked using fast-cooking methods like roasting, grilling, or sautéeing. With fast twitch muscle, optimal eating conditions are met pretty much as soon as you reach your final serving temperature (say, 145°F for a chicken breast or 125°F for a steak). Extended holding at that temperature can increase tendernessslightly, but you won't see any major changes in texture or flavor.
  • Slow twitch muscle, on the other hand, comprises the continually working muscles in an animal. The shoulders and haunches that keep the animal upright and walking. The tail muscles that keep the flies off. The muscles around the flank that keep the animal breathing. Slow twitch muscle is characterized by robust flavor, but a very tough texture with lots of connective tissue that needs to be cooked for extended periods of time to be broken down. With slow twitch muscle, the tenderness of the finished product is dependent not only on the temperature at which it's cooked, but also the length of time it is cooked for. Beginning around 160°F tough collagen begins to break down into tender, juicy gelatin. The hotter the meat, the faster this breakdown occurs.

So to sum up:With fast twitch muscle, temperature is the most important factor when cooking. With slow twitch, both time and temperature affect the final product.

The Best Temperature to Cook Pork Butt

So if higher temperatures leads to faster breakdown of connective tissue, shouldn't you just blast your pork shoulder at the highest oven temperature it can take without burning the skin?

Not so fast. Temperature has other effects too, namely, drying meat out. I roasted two identical pork shoulders until they were both equally tender. One at 375°F (which took about 3 hours), and second at 250°F (which took about 8 hours). After roasting I calculated the amount of total moisture lost in the meat by adding together the weight of the finished roast plus the fatty drippings in the pan below and subtracting that from the initial weight of the roast.

Turns out that at a higher temperature, a pork shoulder loses about 8% more juices than at a lower temperature due to muscle fibers contracting and squeezing out their contents. Eating the meat from the two roasts confirmed as much, though to be honest, both were pretty crazy juicy and moist.

On the other hand, the high temperature roast showed at least one definite advantage over the low-roast:The skin.

Here is a piece of skin from a pork shoulder cooked at 375°F the whole time:

Ultra-Crispy Slow-Roasted Pork Shoulder Recipe (4)

And here is a piece cooked at 250°F:

Ultra-Crispy Slow-Roasted Pork Shoulder Recipe (5)

See the difference? Problem is that cooking a great piece of pork skin requires two separate activities.

First, you've got to break down connective tissue. There's a common misconception that animal skin—chicken skin, turkey skin, pork rinds—is made up of fat. This is not true. There certainly is a lot of fat in the skin and directly underneath it (necessary to help warm blooded animals maintain their body temperature), but skin also contains a great deal of water and connective proteins which, just like connective tissues in slow-twitch muscles, must be broken down via long cooking.

On top of that, once the connective tissue has softened sufficiently, moisture needs to be forced out of it, and the remaining proteins need to be heated until they coagulate and stiffen up. It's the combination of these three things—connective tissue breakdown, moisture loss, and firming of proteins—that leads to crisp-but-not-tough skin.

When cooked at 375°F, all three of these things happen at about the same time. By the time the connective tissue has broken down, you've driven off enough moisture from the rind to render it hard and crunchy. In a 250°F oven, on the other hand, connective tissue breaks down for sure, but moisture loss and protein stiffening don't occur to a great enough degree to deliver a crisp finished product. Instead, you end up with skin that's soft and tender, but floppy.

So clearly, once again we should be cooking our pork at a higher temperature, right?

Hold up, there's one more thing to consider.

Getting the Crispiest Skin

We all know whatsurface areais, right? Take a look once again at a close up of the crisp skin from the pork cooked at 375°F:

Ultra-Crispy Slow-Roasted Pork Shoulder Recipe (6)

See how despite a few wrinkles here and there, it's all relatively smooth? Well, smooth objects have relativelylow surface areagiven a particular volume, while winkled, bubbled, crinkly, curvy objects have a relativelyhigh surface areagiven the same internal volume. And when it comes to texture, more surface area = more crunch.

It's the same principle behind, say, scratching up the surface of potatoes before roasting them to get them extra crisp (more onultra crispy roast potatoes here), or packing your burger extra loose to give it a crisper exterior and more browning (check out that effect in my recipe forUltra Crispy Burgers.

When roasting at 375°F, because the dehydrating and protein-setting is taking place at the same time that the connective tissue is breaking down, there's never really a stage when the skin is relatively structure-free. It goes from being firm through connective tissue directly to being firm through dehydration.

On the other hand, after 8 hours in a 250°F oven, the pig skin has very little structural integrity—there's really very little holding it together and it closely resembles a bundle of tiny balloons just waiting to be filled.

How do you fill those balloons?Let heat do the work for you.

Ultra-Crispy Slow-Roasted Pork Shoulder Recipe (7)

By taking that slow-cooked pork, and banging it into a preheated 500°F oven, both air and steam trapped within the skin will rapidly expand, causing millions of tiny bubbles to form and causing the skin to rapidly expand.And here's the key:As the bubbles expand, they stretch their walls out thinner and thinner. Eventually, they are so thin that the heat from the oven is able to quite rapidly cause them to set into a permanent shape that won't collapse even when the pork is pulled out of the oven.

Ultra-Crispy Slow-Roasted Pork Shoulder Recipe (8)

In this sense, pig skin is very much like a loaf of bread: high temperature causes gas expansion which then gets trapped in a protein matrix that firms up in the heat of the oven to create a crunchy, crisp crust.

Ultra-Crispy Slow-Roasted Pork Shoulder Recipe (9)

Have you ever seen anything so beautiful?

Ultra-Crispy Slow-Roasted Pork Shoulder Recipe (10)

Personally, I generally prefer my meat relatively unadorned—good meat, salt, and pepper is all I need. Pork shoulder, on the other hand, is great at taking flavor. You can feel free to rub the meat and skin with your favorite spice blend or dry rub before roasting it, or—my method of choice since it keeps your options open—keep it plain for roasting and instead season the shredded picked tender meat before serving.

I like to bring the thing whole to the table and allow diners to pick and pull at it with their fingers, offering a few sauces to work with on the side. Try sweet and spicynuoc cham, Chinese stylechar sui, Cubanmojo, a sweetMemphis-style barbecue sauce, or a bright Argentinianchimichurri. Or better yet, this is a pork party, so throw out a whole selection.

Shredded roasted pork shoulder is excellent on its own, even better in sandwiches with a bit of cole slaw, or makes an excellent addition to soups, stews, taco fillings, Cuban sandwiches, empanada fillings, arepa stuffings, hash, omelettes, etc.

It's nearly as impossible to mess up slow-cooked pork shoulder as it is to bring the sucker to the table without eating half the skin yourself before it arrives.

December 2011

Recipe Details

Ultra-Crispy Slow-Roasted Pork Shoulder

Prep15 mins

Cook8 hrs 20 mins

Active10 mins

Resting Time30 mins

Total9 hrs 5 mins

Serves8to 12 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 whole bone-in, skin-on pork shoulder, 8 to 12 pounds total

  • Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Directions

  1. Adjust oven rack to middle position and preheat oven to 250°F (121°C).

  2. Line a rimmed baking sheet with heavy duty aluminum foil (see notes) and set a wire rack inside it. Place a piece of parchment paper on top of the wire rack. Season pork on all sides liberally with salt and pepper and place on parchment paper. Transfer to oven and roast until knife or fork inserted into side shows very little resistance when twisted, about 8 hours total.

    Ultra-Crispy Slow-Roasted Pork Shoulder Recipe (11)

  3. Remove pork from oven and tent with foil. Let rest at room temperature for at least 15 minutes and up to 2 hours. Increase oven to 500°F and allow to preheat. Return pork to the oven and roast until skin is blistered and puffed, rotating every 5 minutes, about 20 minutes total. Remove from oven, tent with foil and allow to rest an additional 15 minutes. Serve by picking in the kitchen or just bring it to the table and let guests pick meat and crispy skin themselves, dipping into sauce of their choice on the side (see note).

    Ultra-Crispy Slow-Roasted Pork Shoulder Recipe (12)

Special Equipment

Rimmed baking sheet, wire rack

Notes

To make a pan sauce, skip the aluminum foil when roasting; when the pork's finished, drain off and discard the excess fat and deglaze the rimmed baking sheet by heating it over a single burner and adding two cups of white wine, chicken stock, or a combination of both. Scrape up browned bits, transfer to a small saucepan, season to taste, and whisk in two tablespoons butter off heat.

Read More

  • The Food Lab Redux: 7 Pork Dishes for the Holidays
  • Roast a Pork Shoulder and Feast For Days
  • Pork Shoulder
  • Dairy-free Mains
  • Gluten-free Mains
  • Roasted Pork
  • Pork Mains
Ultra-Crispy Slow-Roasted Pork Shoulder Recipe (2024)

FAQs

How to make crispy crackling on pork shoulder? ›

Preheat oven to 230°C, 210°C fan or Gas Mark 8. Put the joint in a roasting tin on the top shelf for 20 minutes. This sudden blast of heat is the key to crispy crackling. Reduce the temperature to 180-190°C, 160-170°C fan or Gas Mark 4-5 and follow the cooking times below to ensure the joint is cooked through.

How do you keep roast pork skin crispy? ›

For the crackling to stay crispy, you must NOT wrap it in plastic. Plastic will trap any residual moisture and will make the crackling soft and chewy the next day. You must store the crackling at room temperature and in a dry location. Perhaps wrap it in food-safe paper and store in a brown lunch bag.

Do I have to brown pork shoulder before slow cooking? ›

Preparing the pork

I prefer to season the meat before adding it to the slow cooker with my favourite spices, along with salt and pepper. I also recommend browning the meat slightly prior to slow cooking which will help maximise the flavour. However, this is a step that can be left out if you don't have enough time.

How long does it take to slow cook pork shoulder? ›

Brown the pork shoulder on all sides then transfer to a slow cooker. Add all the other ingredients, then cook on low for 6-8 hours until the meat pulls apart when pressed with two forks. Remove the meat, place on a plate and shred it with two forks.

What is the secret of pork crackling? ›

High heat is the final key to pork crackling. Don't rush the process at the final hurdle, let the oven preheat for at least 20 minutes to 230°C. Put the pork in quickly but carefully so the oven stays hot. Depending on the size of your meat, it can take between 30-50 minutes to crisp up completely.

Do you put salt or oil on pork crackles first? ›

How to make pork crackling
  1. Brush the skin liberally with oil – as the pork cooks, this will render the fat out of the skin and encourage it to blister.
  2. Season with salt.
  3. Score the skin with a sharp knife, being careful not to go through to the meat – this helps the fat escape during cooking.

Why is my crispy pork skin so hard? ›

If the heat is too high, the skin will get rock hard, along with the meat. That's why we use medium heat when we fry. And don't forget to dry the pork as much as possible first. The drier it is, the crispier the skin.

Why pour boiling water over pork? ›

boiling water trick

This helps to prep the skin to crackle as its now "pre-cooked" so to speak. Make sure to pat dry with paper towel to further dry afterwards.

Does baking powder make pork skin crispy? ›

Meat is slightly acidic and tends to be moist. Using a combination of salt and baking powder is a one-two punch that can work wonders, especially if you are looking for crisp skin.

Why is my pork shoulder still tough in the slow cooker? ›

It's because you haven't let the collagen break down. Extend the cook time, make sure there's enough liquid and keep an eye on the dish.

Does pork shoulder get more tender the longer it cooks? ›

Unlike the more lean tenderloin and chops, pork shoulder is an incredibly forgiving cut of meat. It becomes more tender as it cooks and benefits from a lengthy cook time, so even if it stays on the heat a few minutes too long, you won't suddenly end up with something dry or rubbery.

Do you slow cook pork shoulder skin side up or down? ›

leave the skin on. put the shoulder in skin side up. rub down the entire meat with dry rub, put onions and minced garlic in the bottom. no liquid needed.

What is the best liquid to cook pulled pork in? ›

Transfer everything to a large slow cooker and add a splash of liquid — water is great, but so is broth, apple juice, or beer if you have them handy. Cover and cook on low until the meat is tender and pulls apart easily.

Is pork butt the same as pork shoulder? ›

Both come from the shoulder of the pig, but pork butt is higher on the foreleg, while pork shoulder is farther down. As relatively tough and fatty cuts, both benefit from long, slow cooking methods such as roasting, stewing, and braising. But the cuts are different enough that we generally prefer pork butt.

How long does a pork shoulder take at 225? ›

For the best results, plan for approximately 1.5 to 2 hours of smoking time per pound of pork shoulder at 225°F. For example, if you have a 10-pound pork shoulder, you can estimate the cook time to be around 15 to 20 hours.

Does pouring boiling water on pork make better crackling? ›

boiling water trick

This helps to prep the skin to crackle as its now "pre-cooked" so to speak. Make sure to pat dry with paper towel to further dry afterwards.

How do you crisp rubbery crackling? ›

Christmas Day SOS: If the pork crackling is rubbery once cooked, you can still use the hairdryer/heat gun trick. So, remove the roast from the oven and apply the heat to the skin until it blisters and crackles. If you don't have either of these tools, put the oven grill on and place the skin underneath.

Should I cover pork crackling joint? ›

Nope. The best crackling needs dry air, and covering will keep condensation on the skin. Covering a joint of meat when cooking does generally help to ensure a juicier joint, but if you use a joint of pork with some fat marbling, this fat will help to keep the meat tender without the need to cover.

How to make pork crackling in a pan? ›

Place your pork skin side down in the frying pan, plonk something flat and heavy on top - a plate or another pan - and press down firmly. You should hear crackling and popping. Continue to cook for about five minutes. Lift a corner and check every so often to make sure it's turning golden brown and not blackening.

References

Top Articles
Latest Posts
Article information

Author: Patricia Veum II

Last Updated:

Views: 5618

Rating: 4.3 / 5 (44 voted)

Reviews: 91% of readers found this page helpful

Author information

Name: Patricia Veum II

Birthday: 1994-12-16

Address: 2064 Little Summit, Goldieton, MS 97651-0862

Phone: +6873952696715

Job: Principal Officer

Hobby: Rafting, Cabaret, Candle making, Jigsaw puzzles, Inline skating, Magic, Graffiti

Introduction: My name is Patricia Veum II, I am a vast, combative, smiling, famous, inexpensive, zealous, sparkling person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.