Boston butt pork roast is good frugal fare

Shopping carefully and planning menus with seasonal vegetables can help save you money.

By Tommy C. Simmons ~ The Baton Rouge AdvocateBATON ROUGE, La. -- It's time to budget, to pay off holiday bills, insurance statements and credit-card debt, and put money aside for April's income tax reckonings. So, it's also a good time for a primer on a frugal food buy, "Boston butt" pork roast.

While you may not be cooking prime rib for a while, you don't have to eat beans seven days a week, either. Shop and cook carefully. Read the grocery ads in the newspaper each week. See what foods are on sale; try to plan menus that feature lower-cost meats and seasonal vegetables.

Look out for Boston butt, sometimes available in special value-priced packages, but always worth considering.

So what is Boston butt?

It's a fresh pork shoulder roast. Carma Rogers, an information specialist with the National Pork Board, says the term "Boston butt" originated in pre-Revolutionary War New England. Some pork cuts were packed into casks or barrels also known as "butts" for storage and shipment.

"The particular way the hog shoulder was cut in the Boston area," Rogers said, "became known in other regions as 'Boston butt.' This moniker stuck and today, Boston butt is called just that almost everywhere in the U.S."

It's also called Boston shoulder roast, pork shoulder butt or just pork butt. Some labels don't include "pork roast" with the Boston butt part because butchers assume cooks know this.

Guess what? They don't. The first time I heard the term, I was interviewing a jambalaya cook who had just won a cookoff. I asked him about his recipe, and he mentioned that he thought the addition of "Boston butt" made his jambalaya more flavorful.

I had no idea what Boston butt was, but didn't want to point out my ignorance to the jambalaya champ. I called my mother-in-law later and asked if she knew what Boston butt was.

"It's an inexpensive pork roast," she said. "Lots of fat, but real tender; you have to cook that fat out," she added.

Boston butt roasts can be cut up, browned and added to jambalaya, but the meat can also be sliced into steaks or cooked whole as a roast.

Merle Ellis, a former butcher and syndicated newspaper columnist, wrote in his cookbook and meat guide, "Cutting-up in the Kitchen," that the best Boston butt buy is usually the whole shoulder with bone, rather than the boneless half. Some of the tenderest tidbits are around the bone, he said.

The Boston butt is easy to bone out, Ellis said. Once done, it can be cooked as a roast, cut for steaks, kebabs, stews or jambalayas, stir-fry strips, or trimmed and tenderized to cook as pork cutlets.

After cooking five Boston butt roasts, our staff's consensus regarding preparation of this bargain-buy meat is: Roast the meat for the first meal, then cut up the leftovers to use in making barbecue sandwich filling or for flavoring jambalaya or beans. It's rich-tasting meat, best served in small portions.

Here are two methods for roasting a Boston butt pork roast.

Fall-Apart Boston Butt

1 Boston butt pork roast (about 4 pounds)

1/4 to 1/3 cup Worcestershire sauce

3/4 cup light brown sugar

1 cup apple juice

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Lightly grease the inside of a casserole or deep roasting dish. Put the Worcestershire sauce in a separate bowl and soak the Boston butt pork roast in the Worcestershire sauce.

Remove roast from Worcestershire sauce and coat with brown sugar, being sure to press the brown sugar all over to form a crust. Place sugar-crusted roast in the casserole dish.

Pour apple juice into the casserole, but do not pour over the sugar-crusted roast. Cover casserole or pan tightly, either with a casserole top or aluminum foil.

Place the roast in the oven and immediately turn the heat down to 200 degrees and bake in the oven for about 5 hours. Uncover the roast and check for doneness. The meat should be so tender it falls apart easily. If it doesn't, cover the roast again and cook for 30 minutes more or as needed.

Recipe by Shirley Corriher, author of "Cookwise."

Note: Corriher says this recipe can also be prepared in a slow cooker. Prepare roast as above. Put roast into slow-cooker insert. Pour apple juice into bottom of slow cooker and add 1/2 teaspoon salt to the apple juice. Set the slow cooker on high for 30 minutes and then turn the setting to low and cook for 8 hours.

Tips for cooking "Boston butt"

Buy a whole bone-in Boston butt and cook the whole roast.

Roast or bake at low temperature for a long period of time to cook out as much fat as possible.

If cooking in a slow cooker, remove the roast from the pot about 1 hour before cooking time is complete and pour off the fat. Return the roast to the pot with additional seasoning or sauce to finish cooking.

Sweet ingredients, such as apples, brown sugar, cane syrup, molasses and fruit preserves, enhance the flavor of roasted pork. Also, tomato- or vinegar-based barbecue sauces pair well with the rich meat.

Cook until the meat pulls apart easily or to a minimum temperature of 160 degrees.

Meat can be sliced off the bone and frozen in plastic bags. The texture and flavor is best maintained if the meat slices are frozen in a barbecue or fruit-flavored sauce.

Tommy C. Simmons is food editor of The Advocate in Baton Rouge, La.