Pork shoulder braised with dried chiles

Pork shoulder, also confusingly called pork butt (it does come from a pig’s shoulder area—what a world!), has become one of my favorite cuts of meat to cook, thanks to my meat CSA and a lovely Alice Waters recipe.

Before the meat CSA, I would never think to buy a pork shoulder. They’re big (at least when cooking for one or two), they’re unwieldy, and what would I know what to do with a big hunk of pork shoulder? But I’ve learned that pork shoulder is one of those cuts of meat that benefit from long, slow cooking until they become very tender. Because of my occasional paranoia about not cooking meat enough, my unfortunate historical tendency has been to err on the side of overcooking the meat. And along has come a very forgiving cut, one that is probably hard to overcook, though I haven’t tested that theory. Combine this with a delicious and simple recipe and you can’t go wrong.

This pork was browned to get a nice crust on each side, then braised for hours in a Dutch oven in the oven in the most delicious smelling sauce I’ve made in a while—chopped vegetables, water, aromatics, and the secret ingredient, dried ancho and chipotle peppers which lent some warm, almost fruity flavors to the sauce. There was some spiciness as well, but very little heat. Also, the dried peppers, cooking in the liquid, reconstituted back to what I imagine is close to their full original size, so it was like a fun, food-related magic trick.

So lesson learned: braising is an awesome technique!! And the sauce itself is a simple-cooking revelation. Even to just smell its incredible aroma made me feel happy. Having no experience with cooking with dried anchos (and I’ve probably eaten them before somewhere, but they’re far, far from my area of expertise), after this I’ll definitely be figuring out how to use them again. But the pork itself had a lot of flavor and a great tenderness and is, again, very forgiving, meaning heating it back up for multiple rounds of leftovers is no problem at all.