Cider-Braised Pork Shoulder - Pork Stewed in a Creamy Apple Cider Sauce

[Music] hello this is chef john from food wishes comm with cider braised pork shoulder that's right we're gonna use hard apple cider to make soft succulent pork and while i think everybody would be interested in a recipe that's this easy and taste this delicious the people that i really want to pay attention to this are the folks of the email me saying whenever they try to cook pork shoulder it doesn't get tender and my reply is always the same that's impossible so hopefully we're gonna clear that up once and for all anyway that is the plan and to begin what we'll do is take one large piece of pork shoulder and cut it up into a bunch of smaller pieces so what i have here is about a three pound piece of boneless pork shoulder roast that my butcher tied up with some string to make it look a little more roasty and what we'll do is remove that and then look for any natural seams okay you see how this kind of naturally splits open that's where we'll make our first cut and then once that's been accomplished we'll start cutting this up into whatever size pieces we want and your options here range from not at all just leave it in one giant piece all the way to cutting it up into tiny cubes okay really depends on what you want to look and feel like as well as how fast you wanted to cook but as you're about to see now withstanding one or two small rogue pieces i'm gonna leave binding fairly large sections i don't know maybe like three inch size pieces so i generally go through once cutting it into some nice big pieces so i can see what i'm working with and then depending on the size or shape I'll break those down until I have what you sort of see here and I believe I mentioned three inch pieces earlier but please do not focus on any specific measurement since when we use this low and slow cooking method everything's going to get nice and tender regardless of the exact shape and size so just try to get those close that's all we ask and then what we'll do at this point is generously season those with kosher salt and if we wanted to go for a thicker stickier sauce which I don't we would also dust these with flour but this time I decided to just go with salt since I think that's going to work best for this particular sauce that's basically going to be a reduced cider but as usual that's your decision you are after all the you of what's really a stew and then what we'll do once our pork is seasoned is brown it very well on both sides and some kind of heavy bottomed Dutch oven and a little bit of vegetable oil and we'll do that over high heat and please do not rush this step okay definitely want to give it enough time to get a nice crust going so that's what I did and then I went ahead and flipped him over and then next on the itinerary once these are nicely Brown we'll remove those to a bowl to rest well we proceeded to sweat some onions in these beautiful beautiful meat drippings so we will go ahead and delete the meat and toss in one large chopped onion along with of course the traditional large pinch of salt and a little bit of freshly ground black pepper and we'll give those a stir and cook them for maybe three or four minutes or until they start to turn translucent oh and we should also reduce our heat to medium and by the way whenever I use this white ceramic coated Dutch oven the bottom always looks like it's burning but it's really not although we do have a nice dark brown carmelization which as many of you may know is called a found and that's where a lot of the flavor and color of our sauce is gonna come from but anyway what we'll do when our onions and pan look like this is toss in a handful of torn sage leaves and yes of course freshly torn and we will let those cook for just about a minute stirring them a couple times to infuse our fat with their very pork friendly aroma and flavor at which point it's time to add the second most important ingredient one bottle of hard cider and yes of course you can use alcohol-free cider in this but those generally tend to be sweeter so if you can try to use the real stuff preferably from France so we'll go ahead and pour in the entire bottle and give that a stir and of course that's going to deglaze all that goodness off the bottom and then what we'll do is put our heat back on high because we want to bring this up to a boil we also at this point want to add some apple cider vinegar which is going to balance the sweetness of the cider and the richness of the pork so we'll go ahead and stir that in and then once that's been accomplished we can reduce our heat to low and add our pieces of brown pork shoulder back in and know you can't substitute pork loin for this I can't even believe you asked it is way too lean to braise in cider even though technically this is doing but cider braised pork sounds better so we'll go ahead and add our meat back in along with of course any accumulated juices if you throw those away we can't be friends and then what we'll do is place on the lid and let this simmer on low for one hour and it's never a bad idea to peek once in a while to make sure this is not simmering too hard all right we want a gentle simmer just some little bubbles here and there so that's looking good and like I said we will cook that for one hour at which point is definitely not done okay all we're gonna do at this point is take off the lid and flip everything over and then once we've done that we'll put the lid back on and continue simmering cover down low for another hour to two hours or until our meat is fork tender okay so all you people that say your pork mysteriously stays hard listen to me now and hear me later do not stop cooking until your pork is tender as tested with a fork okay so give it the old poka poka and if it still feels hard let it cook I mean why would you stop before it's tender it makes no sense but mine was and when yours is we'll go ahead and remove that with a strainer tool bowl we can also go ahead and put our heat back on high as well as that a nice big spoon of creme fraiche or a splash a heavy cream but as almost always the creme fraiche will taste a little better in my opinion and we have a video showing you how to make it it's actually pretty easy so we'll go ahead and stir that in and bring this up to a boil on high and then what we're gonna do here is try to reduce this down by about half or until it just starts to thicken up slightly and as with all boiling sauces if it contains fat that's gonna pull up on top and if you want you could skim that off okay that's really your business but I usually do skim off most of it and like I said we will let that reduce down until we have something that sort of looks like this which by the way is not going to be the final thickness because we are gonna put our pork back in and cook it a little more and what I suggest doing before that though is given the sauce a taste and adjusting with more salt if necessary or even maybe a shake a Cayenne like I did and then as I said we'll go ahead and place our pork back in and we'll go ahead and make sure it's nicely coated with what should be an amazing tasting sauce and then what we'll do to finish this recipe off is let it continue simmering on low tossing or basting it with the sauce occasionally until we think it's perfect meaning that our pork has been heated through and perfectly tender as well as our sauce has reduced exactly as thick as we want it all right you can go all the way down to a glaze if you want but I don't personally I don't want something too too thick I basically just want to thick enough to coat the meat so I probably let mine go for another 15 minutes or so until I just couldn't stand waiting anymore at which point I stopped and served it up and this stuff is amazing on any kind of potato pasta or of course spaetzle but in a little plot twist I went with buttered rice and of course we're gonna spoon over plenty of that ridiculously delicious sauce and then to finish out by top mine with an extra spoon of creme fraiche as well as some freshly snipped chives and that's it what I'm calling cider braised pork shoulder is done yes of course it took some time but that's why it tastes so good in the combination of that rich succulent sticky meat cloaked in that slightly sweet slightly tired cider reduction is just beyond description just an absolutely stunning combination and again the key here do not stop cooking until your pork is tender like this okay we don't want a totally falling apart we're not trying to make pulled pork here but it really should be soft and tender and by the way in case you're wondering that beautiful vegetables delicata squash which I really should show you how to work with it is very much underused and amazing and I know it's not normal to get excited over squash but I got to tell you this one's kind of exciting so possibly stay tuned for that but in the meantime I really do hope you give this cider braised pork shoulder a try soon so head over to food whooshes dot-com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy you

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 592,090

Rating: 4.9561076 out of 5

Keywords: Pork, Shoulder, Cider, Braised, Stewed, stew, Apple, Sauce, fall, winter, chef, john, meat, foodwishes, slow, cooked, food, recipes, recipe

Id: 3ImE5jhnOt8

Length: 8min 38sec (518 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 27 2017