We hosted Small Group this past week over at our home and I got the chance to finally make Momofuku’s Bo Ssam. It truly is a porky feast!! I’ve been totally obsessed with David Chang’s cookbook… I’ve made the pork belly buns multiple times this month and I finally got around to tackling the ramen broth. Ironically, I noticed that one of the toppings for the ramen included roasted pork shoulder. The same kind that he uses in his Bo Ssam recipe. Early this week, I stopped in the grocery store and bought two hunks of pork shoulder and let them brine in my fridge until Tuesday. Wednesday morning, I popped them into my All-Clad slow cooker since I wasn’t comfortable leaving the oven on all day while we weren’t home. I got home, pulled the shoulders out, popped them into the oven for the last 1.5 hours to finish.
While the shoulder was caramelizing and warming up, I made the various sauces and condiments to go with it and did the quick pickles again. I had made pork belly over the weekend so I toasted up the slices and pulled together some pork belly buns as appetizers. Lettuce, ssam sauce, kimchee, kimchee puree, cucumber, rice, pickled onions, ginger scallion sauce, and of course, the roast pig. It made for a yummy feast and I was really impressed with how it turned out. I still can’t get over that Momofuku charges $200 buckaroos for this… not including tax and tip… which brings it up to around $250. GEEZ!!!
I was too busy running around like a headless chicken but my lovely friend Lise managed to snap a pic of the table before we devoured the food. I totally stole this off of her FB page. Thanks Lise!!!
photo credits: Lise N.
When I’m feeding friends and large groups, usually it resorts into some sort of carb heavy dish since prepping lots of meat leads to inconsistency. My pots and pans are only so large… and making multiple batches = cold first batch or people waiting around to eat. This pork shoulder dish really hits the spot… plenty of meat so I’m not stuffing everyone with carbs, plenty of lettuce to wrap the meat up in so that helps take the headache away from having to do a veggie dish. I guess I can always default to roasting some brussel sprouts or throwing together a salad… but I usually shy away from salads at get togethers anyway.
Thanks Momofuku!! 😀