Slow Roast Pork Shoulder

Our answer

Nigella's Slow Roast Pork Shoulder With Caramelised Garlic And Ginger (from AT MY TABLE) cooks a pork shoulder low and slow for 6 hours, followed by a 30 minute blast at high heat to crisp up the crackling. The recipe suggests a 2.5kg (5 1/2-pound) boneless pork shoulder but the weight can be slightly lower or slightly higher without affecting the cooking time.

For the 1.8kg (4-pound) shoulder described we would only reduce the cooking time slightly, maybe by 30 minutes but not much more. The pork shoulder needs to be cooked until it is easily shredded with forks, so we would not want the cooking time to be too short to achieve this. Indeed it would not matter if the joint was cooked for the full time (6 1/2 hours) as pork shoulder is nicely marbled with fat and there is some cooking liquid in the tin, so there is very little risk of the meat drying out. And don't reduce the time of the final hot blast as it is this that will help to give a gloriously crunchy crackling.