Slow Roasted Pork Shoulder and Gravy

Ingredients

• 2kg pork shoulder, bone in, skin on
• 2 red onions, halved
• 2 carrots, halved
• 2 sticks celery, halved
• 1 bulb garlic, divided into cloves (NB: No need to peel.)
• 6 to 8 fresh bay leaves
• vegetable
• Freshly ground salt and pepper, to season
• To serve:
• Roast potatoes and vegetables
• Apple sauce, if desired

Method

1. One hour before you wish to begin cooking the pork, remove it from the fridge and allow it to warm up to room temperature.
2. Preheat the oven to 220 degrees C / 425 F / Gas Mark 7.
3. Once the pork has warmed to room temperature, with the joint skin-side up, take a sharp knife and make ‘scores’ across the whole surface of the skin, approximately 1cm apart (i.e. through into the fat, but not so deep that you cut into the meat, and making sure that you do not cut through the string if the joint is tied). Then take some ground sea salt and rub it into all the ‘scores’ in the skin of the pork (i.e. pulling the skin apart a little if needed), brushing off any excess salt at the end of the process.
4. Now, turn over the pork and season the underside of the joint with a few pinches of salt and black pepper.
5. Place the pork, skin side up, into a roasting tin and roast for 30 minutes, until the skin starts to ‘puff up’ and turn into crackling.
6. Next, turn the oven temperature down to 170 degrees C / 325 F / Gas Mark 3 and cover the pork with a double layer of tin foil, making sure it is ‘snugly’ fitted and pop it back into the oven to roast for another 4 ½ hours.
7. Use this time to prepare the roast potatoes and any other vegetables that you desire to eat alongside the pork.
8. After the 4 ½ hours have passed, remove the pork from the oven, remove the tin foil and baste the meat with the fat from the bottom of the roasting tray. Then, temporarily, move the whole joint onto a chopping board so that you can skim off all the excess fat (i.e. only leave 2 tbsp of fat in the roasting tray), this can be popped into the fridge to use for cooking at another point.
9. Next, add the onions, carrots, celery, garlic and bay leaves to the roasting tray, stirring them into the fat. Now place the pork back into the roasting tray, on top of all the vegetables, and pop everything back into the oven for another hour or so, until the pork is soft and tender. [NB: This is your opportunity to roast the potatoes and cook the vegetables that you have prepared to serve with the pork. NB2: You may need to adjust the cooking time for the roast potatoes if you only have one oven, as they would usually be cooked at a higher temperature - at 170 degrees C / 325 F / Gas Mark 3 they will likely take around an hour to roast.]
10. Once the pork is cooked, move it onto a warm serving plate and cover with tin foil, leaving it to rest whilst you make the gravy.
11. To make the gravy, remove any fat from the roasting tray using a spoon, then add the vegetable stock and stir. Next, place the roasting tray onto the hob, heating it over a medium heat, bringing it to the boil and then allowing it to simmer for a few minutes, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon to make sure that you get all the ‘tasty goodness’ from the bottom of the roasting tray. Once the gravy is a good colour / consistency then pour it through a sieve into a jug, using the wooden spoon to push as much of the ‘vegetable goodness’ through the sieve as possible. Season with freshly ground salt and pepper to taste.
12. Once everything is ready, serve the pork and crackling on warm plates together with the roast potatoes, vegetables and gravy, accompanied by some apple sauce if desired, and enjoy.