A rapid roast!

Sunday lunch is a moveable feast – not just served at lunchtime – recently ours was 6.30pm. If you're not careful you seem to finish up in the kitchen faffing and messing around all day.

Your prep is the same whenever you are serving so, here's my basic menu and my take on the quickest and easiest way to produce it :

“roast” pork

crackling

“gravy” from the pork

apple sauce

sage and onion stuffing with apple

roast parsnips with maple syrup

roast potatoes

Instead of “roasting” a joint use your slow cooker and cook a piece of boneless shoulder – pulled pork if you like but not shredded finely. It takes 8 hours and the beauty of it is that once it's in the slow cooker it needs no attention until you remove it 8 hours later. Once removed wrap the shoulder in foil and allow it to rest for 30 minutes. You are left with delicious juices and all that's required is to add slaked cornflour to the meat juices and whisk.

If you are a lover of crackling then ask your butcher to remove the skin from the shoulder, you can cook it in a preheated hot oven later in the day.

Slow cooked shoulder of pork

Serves 4-6

1.5kg boneless shoulder of pork

(skin and rind removed for crackling – optional)

2 tsp sea salt flakes

2 tbsp dark brown sugar

1 tbsp sweet smoked paprika

1 tbsp rapeseed oil

100ml good quality apple juice

1 tbsp cornflour, mixed with 1 tbsp water

As mentioned above, ask your butcher to remove the skin and rind, and leave flat (in other words discard any string), dry with kitchen roll. Mix the salt, sugar and paprika and rub half of it over the pork.

Heat the oil in a large frying pan and brown on all sides. Place the pork in your slow cooker, pour over the apple juice and cover with lid. Cook on low for 8/9 hours.

Remove the pork, wrap in foil and leave to rest for 30 minutes.

Whilst the pork is relaxing add the cornflour (mixed with the water) to the sauce in the slow cooker. You can also add the remainder of the seasoning if you want extra zing in your “gravy”. Each time you pass the slow cooker give it a stir.

Pull your pork with two forks into large pieces – do not shred.

Ps. If you wanted another entry for your culinary dictionary, “slaked” means the mixing of a thickening agent – in this case cornflour – with water. Hey - you never know when this may come in handy!