Your Best Roasted Pork Shoulder

A few spices and herbs deliver a big payoff.

Aliwaks has you first toast all the spices: coriander, salt, black peppercorns, fennel seeds and red pepper flakes.

We hate our jobs.

Toasting the spices.

They're done when you can smell them. They go from pleasantly fragrant to burnt in a flash so it's a good idea to hover. This was our second batch; first batch went in the garbage!

Merrill zests oranges while Amanda takes the challenging/ill-advised route of grinding the spices by hand. You can get it done in a matter of seconds in a coffee grinder. Either way, keep the spices a little coarse. You want some pebbly bits in your porchetta.

Merrill adds olive oil to the spices, garlic, orange zest and chopped rosemary to make a paste.

A boned pork shoulder is a large and unwieldy hunk of meat. Amanda attempts to tame it.

Rubbing the paste into the meat.

Rubbed.

We didn't have a baggie large enough to hold the pork so we heaped it in a bowl and covered it for its day-long resting time.

Too many cooks in the kitchen? We never think so!

Merrill skillfully rolls the shoulder into a log. A giant log.

Next, we tied it at 1-inch intervals.

We slipped the bay leaves under the twine, and in place of the pork skin we used pancetta and just laid 9 slices over the top of the porchetta like fish scales.

The pancetta curls up like butterfly wings in the oven. We thought it looked pretty fabulous.

Merrill reduced the pan juices with some vinegar.

Truly one of the most gorgeous and satiny pan sauces we've seen.

Before slicing, you remove the pancetta and if you're a virgo, you arrange it in a perfect overlapping row.

Here's we're debating the thickness of slices. Aliwaks says 1/4-inch thick slices. So does Merrill. Amanda says thin, thin, thin! She loses.

Don't forget to serve the pancetta (or skin if using it) with the porchetta. Enjoy!

The marinade starts with just a little bit of rum...

The garlic seemed to cause a chemical reaction when we added it to the rum.

Amanda adds the cider.

Plenty of salt is the key to any brine.

Juniper berries and peppercorns -- crushed in the handy-dandy mortar and pestle.

Once all of the ingredients are added, you bring the marinade to a simmer and stir just until the salt dissolves.

Once the marinade is cool, you just put it in a zipper bag with the pork shoulder and refrigerate it for 18 to 24 hours.

We had a pork shoulder that had been brining since the day before, so we rinsed and dried it thoroughly and were ready to go!

Browning the pork shoulder in a bit of oil gives it a nice golden crust.

We transferred the pork to a cast iron pan to roast it. (We needed the other pan for something else!)

While the pork is in the oven, you can start on the apples, which are sautéed with minced red onion...  

...and fresh rosemary.

Wonder if Amanda's smile has anything to do with that half-empty bottle of rum nearby...

or with the fact that she's about to pull off this nifty trick.

We cut the apples into chunks rather than thin slices, inspired by Kevin's photo.

They browned perfectly on both sides.

In goes the red onion.

And why not add some more run while we're at it?

A little cider, a quick simmer, and the apples are ready!

The pork was perfectly cooked in an hour and a half.