Joe Bennett: Pork shoulder best winter roast meat - the more fat and salt, the better

The pork roast's crackling will be golden and you will want to pick at it. Mouth it. Bite it. Hear it surrender. It will both crunch and melt, and shred at the touch of a fork, writes Joe Bennett.

A DOG'S LIFE

Now is the winter of roast meat. The best roast meat is pork. And the best roast pork is shoulder. And the best of roast pork shoulder is the crackling. And I have cracked crackling. Are you listening now? I have cracked crackling.

We, as a species, have been eating pigs for as long as we've been a species. The pig is the beast that has served us best, whose flesh we most like. We kill and eat them by the million, none more so than the Chinese. Every year they rear half the world's pigs, and eat the lot.

Every bit of a pig is almost as useful to us as it is to the pig. But today we are concerned only with the shoulder. Pig shoulders are not made equal. The shoulder you want has thick fat, an inch or so of fat, the fat being a bright white. If you can't find it, stop right there. Thin fat will always disappoint. Buy some other meat. Wait for the day when there's fat fat.

And forget the anti-fat propaganda. Fat is fuel and fat is good. Our ancestors throve on fat and were as skinny as whippets. Inuit people eat little but fat and are not fat. Fat doesn't make you fat.

Strip the shoulder of its cling wrap and stare at it, this hunk of flesh. Acknowledge the predatory nature of life, that all life feeds on other life, that there is no innocence, then get on with it. Examine the skin. It needs to be scored and it needs to be dried. The scoring is dangerous work. Any knife that will get through a pig's skin will make short work of a finger, an artery. But go ahead. Life is risk. Score the skin of the late pig, its rind, its outer peel. Score it to a chess board of one-inch squares. (I don't know what an inch is in centimetres. Roasting pork calls for ancient measurements.)

Wipe the skin down then salt it. Salt it generously. Forget the anti-salt propaganda too. Salt is fundamental to civilisation. Without salt we'd have struggled. Salt has got us through droughts and winters. Salt is good.

A pork spit roast being prepared during a festival. Humans have been eating pig meat since we emerged as a species, says Joe Bennett. Photo / NZME

Let the shoulder stand a while as the salt sucks thee skin dry. We are almost ready. Turn the oven on.

The flesh needs little attention. Rub it with salt and pepper. If you wish to be fancy you can peel cloves of garlic and wedge them into the gaps between the sheaves of muscle. They will emerge eventually as charred little lollipops and will be delicious. But they will make no difference to the meat. The meat is sufficient unto itself.

I have read that to make good crackling you must blast it with heat at the start of cooking. Wrong. Or that you must blast it with heat at the end of cooking. Wrong. Here's what you do. Put the meat on a trivet and wrap it twice in tin foil but leave the skin exposed. Then you cook it long and you cook it low. You want to eat at 7pm? You put it in the oven at 1pm, or even noon. And you cook it at 140 degrees.

And that's that. Long and low. Long and slow. For most of those six hours you will have nothing to do but smell it. The smell is part of the meal. That's the smell that drew hunters home from the hill, the smell that made the forest dwellers salivate, that told Romans that the bacchanalian revelry was coming.

Make vegetables to taste. I am not concerned now with vegetables. The meat is the feast. The flesh is the point.

Take it out half an hour before you dine. Make gravy from the burnt bits on the foil. Add hot water, salt and pepper, some Worcester sauce, flour to thicken, mustard, lemon juice, sugar even, the choice is yours. It is hard to go wrong. Gravy is the meal's emulsion, its binder.

Bring the meat to the table. The crackling with be golden and you will want to pick at it. What is the point of self-denial? Pick at it. Pick a square from the edge of the chess board. Mouth it. Bite it. Hear it surrender. It will both crunch and melt. It will be almost too rich. The meat will shred at the touch of a fork. Drown it in gravy. Pour fat red wine. Raise a glass to winter and the pig.