Every year in Southern Ontario we get about a month of cheap pork: whole legs and shoulders for ninety nine cents a pound. I was at Fortinos on Saturday and picked up two whole shoulders. When I got home I deboned them and broke down the meat into three reasonable pieces per shoulder, then put the meat right into the freezer.
I find if I don’t get on it right away big pieces of fresh meat sit in my fridge for a week and I end up throwing it out, which hurts and is just wrong.
I was left with two good sized bones, so into the fridge they went and I roasted them for four hours on Sunday. Towards the end I added onions, garlic and a little water. Using a fork I was able to scrape off all the meat that was left on the bones and I ended up with a sizable pile of beautiful pork: a nice mix of crispy and tender. Scraped up the fond from the bottom of the pan and made a really tasty gravy. The bones went into a pot for stock.
I always use my bones for stock but I was shocked at how much meat was left on the bones after all my trimming. What was thrown away before turned into a full dinner and sandwiches for the week.
