The Best Way to Cook Pork (Confit and Rillettes)

The Best Way to Cook Pork (Confit and Rillettes)

00:00 Intro
00:45 Choosing the Pork Shoulder
01:17 Pork Shoulder Cooking Methods Overview
01:55 Braising Method (   • Pork Shoulder Braised in Osso Buco Sauce (...  )
03:05 Slow-Roasting Method
04:14 Confit Method
06:00 RECIPE STARTS HERE (Curing the Pork)
08:55 Cooking the Pork
10:51 Straining the Pork
11:51 Making Rillettes
13:20 Storing and Serving Rillettes

Chef John’s video that inspired this dish:    • How To Make Crispy Slow-Roasted Spiced Por...  

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CORRECTIONS: The salt amount I use in this video is very conservative. For a more intense flavor, use 1% of salt, not 0.8%. If you are making rillettes, you might want to add more salt during the final shredding and mixing with fat stage since cold things need more salt than hot. When you taste it in the warm state before dividing into jars, it should be slightly over-salted. After further testing, I found that letting the pork salt overnight is not necessary.

Note that the pork shoulder I work with comes with a huge fat cap. If yours doesn't, you'll either need to add some extra pork fat or olive oil.
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In the video my pork shoulder was 3433g (7.57 lb). Obviously, yours might be completely different, so use the percentages to calculate the other ingredients.

3433g boneless pork shoulder (100%)
27g salt (0.8%)
10g sugar (0.3%)
10g pimenton (0.3%)
5g black Pepper (0.15%)
40g whole peeled garlic cloves (1.1%)
180g sliced shallots (5%)
A small bunch of thyme
2 bay leaves
84g olive oil (2.5%)

Remove the fat cap from the pork and score it in a criss-cross pattern. Cut up the pork into 2 inch cubes, scoring any large chunks of fat. In a small bowl, mix the salt, sugar, pimenton, and pepper. Put the pork, fat cap, garlic, and shallots into a large bowl. Sprinkle all over with the salt mixture and mix well. Cover and let sit in the fridge overnight or up to 3 days.

Preheat the oven to 300F (150C) with a rack in the lower third.

Put a little olive oil into an oven safe pot (like a dutch oven). Arrange a layer of pork cubes fat side down. Add the remaining pork with all the aromatics and cover with the fat cap (if you don’t have a fat cap, arrange the top layer of pork fat side up). Cover the pot and bake for 4 hours or until the pork is fork tender.

Cool the pork in the fat until lukewarm. Strain reserving all the liquids and removing the bay leaves and thyme stems. Wait for the fat to rise to the top (about 5 min) and spoon off the fat and reserve. Store the pork, the juice, and the fat in the fridge for up to a week or freeze.

Crisp up the pork in a non-stick or cast iron pan before serving. Serving ideas are coming next week!

Rillettes:
Right after straining the pork, put as much meat as you want into a mixer bowl (in the video, I used 500g). Add 10% of the pork weight in juice (50g juice), and 10% of the pork weight in fat (50g fat). Whip with a paddle attachment until fluffy. Stuff into jars. Smooth the top. Top with fat. Refrigerate overnight before serving. Can be stored in the fridge for up to 2 weeks or frozen.

Toast some good bread (like baguette) in a little butter in a skillet. Spread the rillettes on top. Serve with whole grain Dijon mustard and cornichons.

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