Slow cooking pork shoulder - crackling question

[anonymous-user]

Hi

I am doing a shoulder joint of pork in the slow cooker at the weekend to make pulled pork.

But what to do with the skin? Do I leave it on in the slow cooker, then once the pork is done, cut it off and blast it in the oven to make it crackle up or do I cut it off before I cook the pork?

Ta

Lewis

[warp9]

Personally I'd cut it off first, give it a good salting and cook it separately. Love the pulled pork!

[Bonefish Blues]

...and I do the opposite - take it off towards the end of cooking and crisp it up!

[CaptainSensib1e]

Bonefish Blues said:

...and I do the opposite - take it off towards the end of cooking and crisp it up!

Snap. Get a roasting dish, pour in some of the pork fat, put in some par boiled spuds, put in the skin/crackling and roast the bejeesus out of them. Lovely crispy potatoes cooked in pork fat and lovely crispy crakling. Delicious!

[KKW]

After scoring the skin, cover the whole joint in olive oil and salt and rub it in well. Cook it at about 240 for 45 minutes. The crackling should be nice a crispy by now. Get a knife under the crackling and lift it all off in one piece. Put the rest of the joint into the slow cooker and carry-on from there.

Just before you serve the pulled pork, give the crackling a couple of minutes in a microwave to warm it up.

Edited by KKW on Thursday 5th December 15:20

[Bill]

KKW said:

Put the rest of the joint into the slow cooker and carry-on from there.

Fancy this. A lot. How long in the slow cooker and with what?

[escargot]

I'd take the skin off first to be honest, in the slow cooker you run the risk of it steaming and therefore absorbing too much moisture - you may struggle to recover from that.

If you want to make proper pub style scratchings, slice the skin up and chuck it in a frying pan with half a centimetre of oil in the bottom. You'll know when it's done. Take it out the pan and put on a plate covered with kitchen roll to drain, give it a liberal sprinkling of salt and it's all done.

[otolith]

With that sort of dish I would be loathe to remove any fat from the meat before cooking.

[escargot]

Shoulder is a fatty cut anyway and given it's being cooked in a slow cooker, I'd be very surprised if it dried out simply because you've removed the skin.

[Pete Franklin]

If the skin goes in the slow cooker with the meat it wont crisp up propely when you take it off because its been cooked in a moist environment so will be too flabby. So I would take it off first. However you can cook it at very low temp in the oven with skin on and get the best of both worlds. Try about 14hrs at 100 with pre and post sear.

[anonymous-user]

Thanks for the comments.

I had two trains of thought - mainly echoing above - skin in slow cooker = wet which doesn't not make good crackling when frazled at the end, but I didn't want to cut all the fat off before cooking.

I think, to play it safe, I will cut the skin off before slow cooking the pork. Dry the skin and do that separately in the oven.

[anonymous-user]

Well if anyone is interested this is what I ended up doing.

Due to lazyness i didn't bother taking the skin off before it went in the slow cooker. So, I just threw it in there. After 12 hours I took the joint out, skinned (and popped it back in the slow cooker until I was ready).

I dried and salted the skin and popped that in the oven in some hot oil for about 30 mins. It came out great! Crispy and crunchy.

It may or may not have been any better done another way, but this worked out well, and I would do it this way again (due to me being lazy!)

[Mobile Chicane]

I'd cut the skin off, but be careful not to remove too much of the fat.

Tricky nowadays as I think it is becoming more difficult to get pork with a decent barding of fat on it, unless you can find a butcher which offers traditional breeds such as Gloucester Old Spot.