Inspired by the ‘tinga’ (Mexican roast pork tostadas) recipe in this month’s Cook’s Illustrated, I bought a $12 picnic shoulder at the grocery store on our last trip out. The recipe recommends a boneless boston butt instead, which is probably a good idea given all of the tendons in the lower cut. But my grocer only had the shoulder and it’s cheap so what the heck.
I spent last Saturday morning carving all of the meat off of the bone, at which point I realized just how much pig we’re going to be eating for the next few weeks. As Ange and I try to subscribe to the ‘use everything but the squeal’ philosophy, I portioned the slab for various future meals: two pounds of meat for the aforementioned tinga, a couple of pounds cut into thin slabs for char siu, about another pound or so of trimmings for barbecue or pork tacos, and the bones went into the freezer for congee.
Which left a big hunk of skin. I tried making cracklings out of this, but the porcine gods were not having it: it was a big sticky mess. I ultimately gave up after a one sizzling piece of skin and lard hopped out of the pan only to land on my face about a centimeter away from my right eye. Even fried pig skin isn’t worth blindness.
The tostadas were pretty awesome though.