I had a pork butt/shoulder that I was going to slow roast for dinner. Coincidentally, I was working in the garden in the morning and had to thin out my lemongrass plants that were in a container. I didn’t want the lemongrass to go to waste so I looked up a pork roast recipe where I could use lemongrass and found a recipe on GoodFood.com that looked good. It is a good thing I found this recipe in the morning since it takes a while to cook. I coated the pork with equal parts salt and sugar for a few hours. After the pork cured, I smothered the pork in a mixture of lemongrass, onion, garlic, ginger, lime juice, oil, fish sauce, brown sugar, pepper, and some chili flakes. I put the pork skin-side up and sprinkled a little more salt on it, covered it with foil, and used Kenji Lopez-Alt’s recommendation to roast the pork 250 degrees for about eight hours. After roasting the pork, let it rest for at least 15 minutes and then put it in the oven at 500 degrees until the fat is blistered and crispy. Let the pork rest for about 15 minutes tented with foil before slicing it for serving.

According to Kenji, this works best because the low oven breaks down the tough connective tissue and finishing the pork in high heat will crisp the skin. My family enjoyed this very much!