Note from the Editor…
Ladies and Gentlemen, it can now be revealed. I hope you didn’t lose too much sleep over the weekend about the ever elusive man of mystery who is joining the Get Your Grill On Team. It’s Dr. Biggles of Meat Henge fame. I’m sure many of you have guessed already his identity already, but please welcome Dr. Biggles with his first article for GYGO; Arrosto Di Maiale Al Latte!
I was out shopping and got that glassy look in my eyes while at the butchers, I get this a lot.
There it was, a little 2.72 pound pork shoulder. It spoke to me louder than all the others. Odd because I was there looking for a leg of lamb or pork sirloin. I carefully picked him up, slipped in to a nice baggy and off I went. I had my recipe for the day all laid out. But instead of smoking a stuffed roast, I was going to braise a pork shoulder in milk, outside, in a camp dutch oven. As long as I have my mind made up, that’s what’s important.
Arrosto Di Maiale Al Latte was how I was introduced to it and it’s been a love affair ever since. The milk does something wonderful to the meat. Not only is it juicy & tender, but it’s rich, like a long simmered stew. The milk reduces, breaks and turns in to little bits of a cheesy curd and offers up a kind of pork au gratin. When poured back over the pork, it’ll send you flavors that will most certainly make your toes dance.
As you can see your ingredient list is short.
- 1 pork roast, 2.5 to 3.5 pounds - loin, sirloin or shoulder
- 2 pats of good butter - salt or unsalted, who cares
- Salt and Pepper
- 7 - 8 cloves of fresh garlic, sliced
- 2 cups whole milk
Sorry, if you’re looking for low calorie, wheat free braised pork roast, this ain’t it. Oh wait, it is wheat free. Gholl, I’m killing me.
Pull your roast from the fridge and let come to room temperature.
Go dig out your camp dutch oven. You’ll want one just a tad larger than your roast. Too much liquid and you’re not braising, you’re boiling. For this little roast my 10″ dutch fit the bill.
Cooking outside with these camp dutch ovens (they have feet and lids that hold briquettes) is pretty darned easy. Getting your charcoal lit and in place is dead simple. The important part is finding a decent place to cook. You need a table that won’t burn down (no wood, foo) and you need a wind-break so your coals don’t go away in 5 minutes. This way your oven maintains a somewhat even temperature.
My smoker has some cool charcoal trays inside that make it straight forward to cook on. Or you could buy a table meant for such things from a local camping/hunting supply store.
To maintain a 325 to 350 degree internal oven temperature you want to have 2x as much briquettes versus the size of your oven handy. For a 10″ oven you’ll want to have about 20 briquesttes on hand, most of these are for the lid.
Use one of your grills to hold coals that are either getting started or keeping warm.First we need to brown the roast in a few dollups of butter. About 18 to 20 briquettes on the bottom to get things rolling. It doesn’t take long for things to heat up where your butter will melt and get sizzlin’.
Once the roast is brown, toss in your sliced garlic and cook that a little too. It smells so good I nearly think it’s April. Once the garlic has released some love, add the 2 cups of milk and your Salt and Pepper.
Maintain 6 greyed briquettes under the bottom of the dutch and about 13 around the lid. Make a pretty, linear pattern so things cook somewhat evenly. If the briquettes get small, replace with freshly greyed ones. The timing on this will vary due to wind, temperature and probably a few other variables.
You’re going to need to turn the lid 1/4 turn every 15 minutes and the bottom gets the same in the opposite direction. For today’s recipe it isn’t so critical as it would be for baking pastry or something equally as delicate.
One final point is you need to be aware of is something called, “Ash Management”. Those briquettes can’t work their best covered by or sitting in a pile of ash. Dr. Jones uses blasts of air from an aerosol can, I use a hand powered rig called the
Air-Grill. The Air-Grill isn’t as powerful, but it does the job. Any way you can safely get the ash out, is okay by me. If you’re going to compete, you should ask the judges about the canned air, they may not be hip to it. Play nice with the judges. This and a heavy pair of leather gloves and you’re ready sit down and let the cooking begin.
Do your lid and pot turning and every 35 minutes baste the roast with the simmering milk. After 1.5 hours I had this in my pot. In my gas oven inside, it’s taken hours. The pork came up to 210 degrees, juicy, and had to take extra care in removing the loose and bendy roast.The rich and creamy pork smells pouring from this pot are to die for. Worth every time I had to get up and turn that damned lid, blow the ashes and spin the pot.
Remove roast and let rest on cutting board for maybe 15 minutes, tent loosely with foil if you’re outside. While you want the roast to cool a bit and let the pressures lessen, you don’t want to give your meat a chill. Cold pork is no place to be, trust me.
The gravy needs to be stirred up and the garlic bits need to be smooshed in. Whizzing it in a blender for a few turns really works wonders. You’ll need to add more Salt and Pepper to serve.
Don’t it look GREAT? Wait until you taste it. Once you’ve completed the recipe and tasted the flavors, you’ll realize how versatile this recipe is. With the great flavor delivery system of milk fat and pork fat, you could take this roast to Thailand, El Salvador or Louisiana without much effort. Can you imagine your friends or family members coming back to camp to this meal? Hooyah!
Keep warm everyone and happy eats!
Biggles
It’s beautiful, and it almost makes the idea of standing outdoors in the rain for two hours worthwhile. Turning the pot every 15 minutes, worrying about graying briquettes. I think I understand most everything about it except for the charcoal lumps on the pot lid. No pix of that, and my imagination is faulty. You teach me, eh, soldier?