Recipe For Pork Shoulder

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Star AniseIt's Winter in my part of the world. Time for slow cooking. Since the fire-pig year is coming to a close I thought I'd do something with pork.

If you are training in martial arts, or even if you are hoping to develop the mysterious Daoist inspired "rainbow body," you are in for a long slow process. Still, everywhere I look, people are trying to find a short cut. While I do believe short cuts are possible, most attempts to speed things up end in failure.

Attempts to short cut the process of making high quality muscle and sinew usually produce toughness at best (lets not talk about the worst case scenario).  Taking the muscle metaphor a little further, what quality of meat are you producing in your training?

If you try to cook pork shoulder in the microwave you're going to produce something so tough, you might as well have put your shoe in there. All my attempts to speed up the process of making pork shoulder edible have ended in something that requires a lot of chewing and is short on flavor. So here is Nam Singh's recipe:

  • Put a pork shoulder in a dutch oven or heavy pot with a lid

  • Half cover it with a 50/50 mix of soy sauce and water.

  • Add one whole star anise.



  • Put it in a preheated oven at 250 degrees with the lid on

  • Turn the pork shoulder every 30 minutes for 51/2 hours

  • The finished product has a light sweet black crust and the meat melts in your mouth.

  • I like to serve it with homemade pickled cabbage & daikon over rice.

  • Don't be alarmed if the people you feed this to find it difficult to speak for a few minutes and their eyes roll back into there heads.


Note:  If you are interested in San Francisco classes on cooking with traditional Chinese herbs with Nam Singh, drop me a note and I'll get you in touch with him.