Last week I celebrated Feast Wisely’s second birthday. Over the last two years I’ve enjoyed sharing over 150 posts covering recipes and restaurants. And of course I’ve enjoyed all of the eating this has entailed. I’ve also learnt a lot along the way. Reflecting back the most valuable piece of advice I received early on was to be consistent – both in terms of frequency of posting and the theme of posts. For me consistency comes from planning ahead and then making the time to stick to the plan. Despite ambitious goals of posting twice weekly I’ve now settled into a more manageable pattern of one post per week. This leaves me with plenty of free time to read other foodie blogs and to focus on the quality of my writing.

Over the last two years one Feast Wisely post stands out a mile in terms of visitors – my recipe for slow cooked pork shoulder with perfect crunchy crackling. Week in week out it’s the most popular page on Feast Wisely and every Sunday the number of views spikes – in line with the traditional Sunday Roast.

At the moment I have my mum here in Australia, visiting from the UK, so my writing (and cooking) time is more constrained than usual. So today I decided to share photos of my latest pork shoulder roast – from Christmas Day 2015. It was my most successful yet – and of course the leftovers lasted for days.

The pork before

I buy organic pork shoulder from my local butcher and always choose one with the bone in. The pork you see here weighed around 2.5kg and would provide a generous serving for 6-8 people. It’s best to salt the pork skin 24 hours before cooking and then store it in the fridge.

The pork after cooking

I cooked the pork for 30 mins on 250C (to get the skin crackling) and then turned down the heat to 130C for another 6 hours or so. It remained uncovered the whole time. When preparing such a big piece of meat it’s always best to remove it from the fridge 1-2 hours before cooking.

The pork after slicing (or shredding)

As you can see the skin had crackled perfectly and the meat underneath could be easily shredded with a fork. Pork heaven.

The recipe

Keen to see more? Check out the original recipe here – slow cooked pork shoulder with perfect crunchy crackling. And here’s a summary of my tips for perfect pork crackling:

If you have any other tips I’d love to hear them…..

By Laura (Feast Wisely)

Other posts you might like:

• Slow cooked pork shoulder with perfect crunchy crackling
• Recipes for glazed smoked ham – perfect for Christmas
• Pulled pork sliders with BBQ sauce (& no added sugar)
• Whole lamb shoulder, slow cooked