This online recipe for roast pork Works :) - RecipeTin Eats

This is a truly rare recommendation from me. Background is I have never cooked in my life. I can "cook" instant noodle and that is about it.

So for me, wrestling with this roast pork was an adventure of sorts.

It all started when we saw this large chunk (about 2kg) of pork leg in the local super market for a song. Alice didn't want to cook it. She has "performance anxiety" when it comes to cooking roast pork. So I thought why not have a go and try something new.

So I did a google search for a roast pork recipe and the recipe below was the first one. It looked especially simple so I went with it.

This is the recipe:

https://www.recipetineats.com/pork-shoulder-roast-with-crispy-crackling/

The surprise for me was how quickly preparation was... Think it took under 15-20mins max.

Basically, dried the skin with paper towels. Rubbed the meat with the various ingredients (salt, fennel seeds, pepper, olive oil). Cut 2 onions in half. Chuck some garlic into the bottom of the pan. Put the meat on top. Then turned on the oven.

Heating instruction was straight forward enough (even for me).... 140 degree (fan forced) for 2.5 hours. Then crank up the heat to 250 degree for another half an hour (to ensure the crackling works).

Haha... It worked. You can see the Pic1/2. Not the prettiest roast pork ever. A bit of a stuff up with the meat, I used too much seasoning so quite salty. BUT the crackling worked perfectly.... Even had the crunchy sound the day after.

Other tidbits..... We got the pork in a vacuum sealed plastic bag. Some online articles reckon it is a No No... The skin would have too much juice and would be best to dry the pork in a fridge overnight..... Other recipes recommend that the skin be scored or run it through boiling water.... I did none of that (and fully expected the experiment to fail but I figured as long as the meat was cooked, it would still be edible)..... and it still worked (with the crunchy crackling). Talk about beginner's luck :)

So if you are looking for an idiot proof roast pork recipe, this one is worth a try. Its margin for error is high as I can testify.... Ha....