Chinese Slow-Cooked Pork

Thanks to a fantastic half-price offer at Morrisons I did something which is quite rare and bought a joint of meat.  Pork shoulder is a cut I love cooking as it tenderises so well when you have a few hours spare and at £2 something a kilo I thought I would treat Fran to something special ;)

Chinese Slow-Cooked Pork

When we are not talking about food we are generally talking about our fast-approaching little soiree to Switzerland (hence the curiously placed guide book above).   In a few weeks we will be no doubt trying to cook a cheese fondue or something but for now - back to the pork....

I can't really attribute this recipe to anyone as I looked at a few, pinched some ideas but changed quantities, missed some things out and added some others so I guess this is my own creation.  With slow-cooker recipes you don't need to be too accurate on cooking time and we find we often go to the pub until we are hungry.  In this case it added about 3 hours to the planned cooking time so we were left with a "pulled pork" type of consistency which was fantastic actually!  The sauce was very rich but the meat could take it and had we not served it with crackling then it would have been a healthy dish too.

Such a very simple dish done this way:

lkg Pork Shoulder Joint
1 teaspoon Chinese 5spice
1 teaspoon salt

Remove the fat from the pork, rub meat with the 5spice and salt and leave in fridge for 2 hours




For the cooking sauce:

1 Tablespoon Molasses
4 Tablespoons Soy Sauce (Gluten-free)
1 Tablespoon Fish Sauce
1 Teaspoon Crushed Dried Chilli
5 Spring Onions
1 Large Knob of Ginger (unpeeled and finely sliced)
6 Cloves of garlic (peeled but left whole)
600 ml of Chicken Stock (Gluten-free)
Cornflour

In a pan dissolve the molasses into the soy and fish sauce.  Add the stock and vegetables and bring to a simmer.

Put the slow-cooker to high and place the meat in the middle.  Pour over the sauce, cover and leave for 4 hours.  Turn the meat and cook on low for at least another 2 hours.

When cooked, remove the meat, cover with foil and leave to rest for 20 minutes while you prepare the sauce.

Pour the sauce from the slow-cooker into a pan through a sieve.









Turn up the heat and thicken with cornflour until at the required consistency.

Shred the meat and scatter it over stir-fried veg, then drizzle over some sauce.  We also had scratchings (done separately) but they were a bit of a disaster so we won't go there. 

We thought it tasty great.  The sauce was rich and spicy but the meat could handle it.  It was nice to have the stir-fry crunch too.  We plan to buy some more pork while it is still on offer so you may see some more slow-cooked pork ideas (or perhaps you could suggest one!?)