I’m making a pork shoulder roast. Yes, I know it’s almost 11pm on a Saturday night. Max and I went out to breakfast this morning and then to the grocery store, where pork shoulder roasts were on sale! So, being the mad food scientist and Molto Mario fan that I am, I figured I would try braising. Mario loves him some pork roasts. The problem is, I don’t have a dutch oven. But, I figured I could brown the roast in a skillet, remove it, brown the veggies and mix in the broth in the skillet. Then, I put everything in the fridge (veggies in broth and roast on a plate). Tomorrow, before we go to church, I’ll throw it all in the crock pot, turn it on high and hope the house smells like Heaven when we get home.
The roast already looks amazing. Oh, you wanna know what I did? Ok, here’s my “suit myself” version of Mario’s braising method:
- Turn the burner on medium high heat and throw your biggest skillet on it.
- After the skillet’s good and hot (you know, flick water on it – if it dances, it’s ready), put three or four tablespoons of olive oil in the skillet. If it starts smoking, it’s a little too hot, turn the heat down just enough to stop the smoking – no one wants a fire.
- Take the pork roast out of the lovely grocery store packaging, wash it off, and then liberally cover it in salt and pepper and plop it in the skillet. Be careful, the oil might splatter, so plop and run.
- Brown the roast on all sides… it should be a deep dark golden brown (Mario’s favorite phrase).
- While the roast is browning, chop up one onion, one red pepper, three celery stalks and one big tomato into pretty large pieces (these are all crockpotting tomorrow, so they shouldn’t be dainty little things).
- Once the roast is done browning, move it to a plate or pan.
- Now, add all those veggies to the pan and cook until the onions start to caramelize.
- If you don’t have vegetable broth handy, boil two cups of water, and drop two vegetable boullion cubes into the water. Once the broth is ready, pour it into the cooked vegetables.
- Scrape the bottom of the skillet to get up all the yummy stuck bits that didn’t come up with the veggies, and then pour the broth and veggies into a bowl.
- Put everything in the fridge until tomorrow.
That’s pretty much what I did tonight. Tomorrow, I’ll get out the crockpot, dump in the veggies and the broth and then the roast and cook it on high for three to four hours. I expect much yumminess. I, of course, will let you know how it turns out.
