As some of you may know I have an on going love affair with the pig! Pork for me is one of the best things on earth and hands down should be a separate food group. I love pork so much that instead of just buying cuts of pork from the local farms in the Catskills (or Whole Foods in a pinch) for the past 2 years I have commissioned JJ Farber farm in Jewett NY (about a 5 mile drive from Catskill Maison B&B) who specializes in grass fed hormone/antibiotic beef and free range eggs to raise a hormone/antibiotic farm roaming pig for me. Every winter a pig is brought to the farm, and John (who runs the farm) handles the pig for me until May when it's big enough to be used for meat. This process is very important because I have complete knowledge of what the pig is eating and it's level of exercise and most importantly I can control how much of each type of meat I want. For the Bed and Breakfast I tend to want a lot of ham, bacon and breakfast sausage. But for myself I have a major affinity for roasted fresh ham/shoulder (ok and all of those parts that make most people squirm so I won't go into those parts for this blog post). This weekend I roasted the last leg of fresh ham so I could have room in anticipation of getting a new shipment of pork in about a month. I'm glad that I roasted the ham when I did because the new pork is being sent to the butcher today. Stay tuned for my blog post on how I broke down the cuts of meat for the pig...but for now enjoy the below recipe for fresh ham Cuban Style!
Roasted Pork Shoulder or Fresh Ham
Ingredients:
8-10 lb Pork Picnic (shoulder) can substitute with Fresh Ham*
Marinade
Bottle of Sour Orange Juice or ½ cup of orange juice and ½ cup of lime juice
1/2 bottle of red wine
2 lemons or limes squeezed keeping the rinds
2 Heads of Garlic ( half of the garlic coarsely chopped and half finely chopped)
2 limes
Olive oil ¼ cup
½ cup of Vinegar
2 tbs of fresh oregano finely chopped or 1 tbs of Dried Oregano
1 sazon packet
1 tbs of Adobo
Salt and pepper to taste
Rub
2 tablespoons of fresh oregano and fresh garlic processed in the food processor, or 1 tablespoon of dried oregano
1 sazon packet
1 tbs of Adobo
1 tbs of onion powder
1 tbs of cumin
Salt
Pepper
Cut 1 inch slits into all areas of the meat. Stuff the coarsely chopped 6 cloves of garlic in the slits (not all slits have to be stuffed). Combine all marinade ingredients in a glass or plastic bowl or glass pan and place the pork into marinade and cover with saran wrap and let sit for 12 hours and then turn the meat over every 12 hours for 48 hours.
Preheat oven to 300 F for 20 minutes
Remove meat from marinade and shake off excess. (Reserve 1 cup of Marinade) Rub meat with olive oil, and combine all rub ingredients and then rub onto meat. Place meat in a pan and put the pan in the oven on top rack. Pour reserved marinade into the pan. Place another pan with water on bottom rack. After 1 and ½ hours baste meat with drippings, and then baste again after 3 hours. After four and a half or 5 hours or when a fork can easily go into the meat remove the water and keep roasting for a total of 6 hours…raise temperature to 450 for ½ hr to 45 min to crisp the outside. Pork is done when meat is falling off the bone and very tender. Do not cut for ½ an hour.
*If you use a fresh ham increase the time by 3 hours.
No comments:
Post a Comment