As you can see from the drip pan the shoulder was really fatty.

Look at that fat cap under the skin.  Once rested for thirty minutes it pulled apart beautifully and we had it on fresh buns with Dijon mustard and pickled red onions.  Stunning: juicy, tender, flavourful.

It’s fairly easy to prepare but at times seems labour intensive.  I prefer pork loin for my schnitzel since it’s fairly cheap and has more taste than chicken breast.  Get a piece of pork loin and trim all fat and silver skin.  Cut inch thick pieces and then pound them out very thin without tearing the meat: I use a cutting board as the base with a towel underneath to deaden the noise, a large Ziplock bag over the meat to prevent tearing and a round heavy pounder I picked up at Williams Sonoma.  It helps get out your anxiety and frustration for week if you pound out a dozen or so pieces.  Season the meat with salt and pepper, both sides.

Prepare your breading station with one shallow bowl or plate of each: flour, egg and bread crumbs.  For the flour I don’t bother seasoning since I already seasoned the meat.  For each egg I add one tablespoon of oil and beat it together: it really helps the bind.  Any style of bread crumbs will work: panko give you really crunchy schnitzel while regular or home-made give a tighter coating but less crunch.  If you want crunchy schnitzel sandwiches later use panko bread crumbs.  Dip each piece of pork into flour, egg and bread crumbs and lay out on a sheet pan with a rack, then put the whole thing in the refrigerator for a few hours to let the breading set.  This helps but not so much that you need to worry about it if time is short.

Cooking can be done in either a dutch oven with a few inches or oil at 375F or in a medium high skillet with butter and oil.  Again if crispy is your thing then go the deep-frying method.  I always used to pan fry in butter and oil but found things became a little greasy.  I have whole heartedly converted to panko and deep-frying as the schnitzel sandwich is all important.

A few hours after dinner I craft the sandwich: a soft bun or white sandwich bread, two pieces of schnitzel, lettuce, onion, cheese (Edam, Gouda, Emmenthal) and mayonnaise.  Soft bread, crunch from the schnitzel, fatty sweet mayonnaise goodness, mild and buttery cheese. Wonderful!

Low and slow was my oven approach: twelve hours at 225F.  First I made a paste of thyme, rosemary, garlic, salt and pepper in a food processor with enough olive oil to keep it moving.  I then cut through the skin creating the pattern shown above: this allowed deep penetration of the herb paste.  After just fitting into my roasting pan the twenty six pound leg was put into my oven and left until the next day.

Two issues with prolonged oven roasting.  The skin becomes rock hard and needs to be discarded: since I made the lattice pattern it was a pain to trim neatly.  Secondly it dries out a bit: not a lot because of the low temperature but it greatly benefits from regular basting.  Next time I’ll remove the skin, score the meat, apply the herb paste and wrap the skin around the roast.

It carved beautifully, thin slices off the roast.  I held it up and carved towards the cutting board; had a good grip with a napkin tied at the small end.  A very nice presentation that works with beef, pork or lamb.

I had a de-boned whole pork shoulder in the freezer that was in two pieces.  After a good defrosting I applied a basic dry rub: equal parts brown sugar, kosher salt, black pepper and paprika.  Left the pork in the refrigerator for a day and then smoked it on my Big Green Egg.  I used the plate setter and kept the Big Green Egg at 200F for fourteen hours.  After about four hours I added additional charcoal but it went the whole night without budging; I was impressed.  As well I used four chunks of apple wood at the beginning of the smoking and that was more than enough.

I had a mop ready but every time I checked the pork was moist and dripping juice; the final product was extremely juicy and succulent.  I credit this to the fatty shoulder but mostly to the Big Green Egg.  Once off the grill I wrapped it in tinfoil, popped it into cooler and served it sliced six hours later.  It went so fast I didn’t have time for a slicing photo but this turned out so well smoked pork shoulder will become a regular on my table.

]]> http://food.ebabble.net/slow-roasted-pork-shoulder/feed 0 http://food.ebabble.net/pork-sirloin http://food.ebabble.net/pork-sirloin#comments Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:17:38 +0000 Scott VanderPloeg http://www.ebabble.net/?p=1047 I’ve been buying whole pork loins lately: they come with a lovely pork loin for about two thirds and sirloin for the last third.  The loin is very nice but the sirloin on these pieces is jagged and just isn’t pretty, so I cut it off.  I find this cut works wonderfully for two applications: my bacon recipe and a slow roast smoked on my big green egg.

The front roast is my smoked slow roasted sirloin and in the rear is the cured and smoked bacon sirloin.  The sirloin is a big jagged as it had a bone removed so it’s best prepared by tying it together with butchers twine every 1.5″ or so as you can see in the above picture.  It holds it’s shape nicely for prep and once cooked and rested the twine can be cut off.

I like to prepare the sirloin roast by tying it and then covering it in a dry rub: I’m partial to Steven Raichlen’s all purpose rub from his book How To Grill but use whatever you like.  Once it’s sat for at least twenty four hours in the dry rub it’s ready for the barbeque.  I like to hot smoke it at 250 degrees F until it reaches an internal temperature of 160 degrees F.

As you can see it had a nice smoke ring and a wonderful fat cap that kept this roast moist and succulent.  Man oh man was that good eats.  Pork sirloin is a wonderfully versatile cut that can be had inexpensively.

Unfortunately I didn’t time it well: I started smoking on my Big Green Egg but only achieved two hours of hot smoking when I have to pull everything to prepare steaks for dinner.  The bacon had achieved an internal temperature of 150 degrees Fahrenheit but the loin was only 120 degrees.  After the steaks were done I added more charcoal, sugar maple and lowered the temperature back down to 180 degrees.  Another two hours and the pork loin had reached doneness.

There it is next to the pork belly: once the skin is off I like to let everything cool overnight before cutting and handling.  As you can see it has a very nice bark and a great smoky aroma.  It had an intense flavour, strong and meaty.  Overall I was really impressed.  It’s nice sliced thinly and eaten cold.  Here’s an extreme closeup.

This time around I seasoned the bones with salt and pepper and added a small amount of pork stock to the bottom of the pan.  After about two hours I flipped them over and roasted until the meat was easy to pull off the bone.

Once again I ended up with a huge pile of meat: there was more fat and cartilage this time but a careful sift through took care of that.  Made a wonderful gravy from the drippings and stock from the now well picked bones.  And to think I used to throw the bones away after trimming the meat!

I find if I don’t get on it right away big pieces of fresh meat sit in my fridge for a week and I end up throwing it out, which hurts and is just wrong.

I was left with two good sized bones, so into the fridge they went and I roasted them for four hours on Sunday.  Towards the end I added onions, garlic and a little water.  Using a fork I was able to scrape off all the meat that was left on the bones and I ended up with a sizable pile of beautiful pork: a nice mix of crispy and tender.  Scraped up the fond from the bottom of the pan and made a really tasty gravy.  The bones went into a pot for stock.

I always use my bones for stock but I was shocked at how much meat was left on the bones after all my trimming.  What was thrown away before turned into a full dinner and sandwiches for the week.