Putting on a fancy feast in the middle of the week --- in several parts

Oh my goodness, it’s a good thing I make a habit of proofing my writing before publishing.  I thought this would be a quick, simple, down-&-dirty sharing of my system of presenting an all-day-cooking, Sunday type dinner in the middle of the week.  But this article got so long and involved, complicated and wordy, yada yada yada.  Let me do you a favor and cut this up into a few articles, one for each dish.  If my cooking tips are at all helpful, I look forward to seeing you in the next few articles.  So here goes with Part I.

I am predicting that this and any other food article I write will never appear under the food category of Gather’s featured articles.  No hurt feelings here.  You see, I don’t cook healthy; I cook good.  So as I said, it won’t hurt my feelings if you would rather investigate healthy cooking recipes.  My cooking is based on old-fashioned recipes, cooking for large families, and using what used to be considered good clean ingredients.

Having said that, I constantly find myself in a quandary because I am a single person with a full-time job who lives in a household of two people.  These old-timey recipes are usually all-day-cooking productions, and I end up with tons more food than I can ever eat.  So eating in the past and living in the present takes a little effort and a lot of scheming. 

            For today’s dinner I made a slow roasted Boston butt pork roast, mac-n-cheese, and butter beans (sort of).  I made this feast in 90 minutes, 30 minutes of preparation and 60 minutes of cooking.  If you bother to read the end of this article, you will discover that this is much easier than it sounds.  But, as I hinted earlier, this kind of meal in the middle of the week takes a little crafty planning. 

            Here’s the deal.  I cooked the pork roast last Sunday.  If that seems like too much trouble, at least let me talk about cooking this cut of meat.  OMG, absolutely nothing could be easier.  Here’s the skinny on Boston butt.  Don’t be afraid of a big cut of meat, and for goodness sake, get a butt with decent marbling.  I’ve cooked this roast in a huge roaster providing lots of open roasting room all around the meat, and that will give you a great crusty surface.  I’ve cooked this roast in a Dutch oven that barely held the butt, and it still came out great.  Here’s all you do:  Get a good butt.  Bone-in adds even more flavor but you can also get a butt with the bone removed.  Season it to your taste – but season heavily.  I use my own house mixture of salt-pepper-garlic powder (lots of garlic powder)-onion flakes.  I season every inch of the meat.  My mom used to cut cloves of garlic in slivers, pierce the raw roast with a knife, and squiggle the garlic slivers into the center of the roast with her fingers.  This added incredible flavor but people don’t like to do that so much these days.  Anyway … pray the pan with a non-stick cooking spray, dump the seasoned meat in the pan/pot, fat side up, cover, and cook in a slow oven.  If your roasting pan does not have an oven-proof lid, use aluminum foil (foil should not touch top of meat).  I cook at 250-275 degrees.  You could go as high as 300 degrees.  And then go about your day.  Truly, a good sized roast can cook for six hours and be so tender and juicy it is like pork butter.  If you are using a tiny butt, check it after a couple of hours.  The theme here is:  low and slow.  If I cook in a large pan, I add a can of beer to give it liquid, but this is optional.  For the last 15 minutes of cooking, I uncover the pan, turn up the heat to 350-375 degrees, and let the meat brown.  It will be gorgeous.

            So now you have this wonderful chunk of roast pork and all its juices.  If you’re going to eat it right then and there, well go ahead.  It tastes as good as it smells and I promise this will be tender and juicy.  If you want to use this as the glorious center piece for a mid-week meal, just pack it in a sturdy container for the fridge, juices and all.  Remove the bone now; it will slip out easily when the meat is hot..  When I eat a butt several days after cooking, I slice it in half inch slices and place these slabs in a big pan, along with the jellied pan juices.  Let it reheat on medium heat.  The juices will make the meat even more tender.

And that’s how you cook a Boston Butt.  My next article will be mac-n-cheese, the real kind.  Don’t be scared.  Its like going for your driving test that first time.  You get through it, and then you have that wonderful freedom the rest of your life.