Puerco Asado (Roasted Pork Shoulder)

Note: A 2-quart oven safe glass baking dish or a disposable aluminum baking pan may be used to marinate and roast the pork.

Place the chopped onion on the bottom of your baking dish or pan. Lay the pork shoulder over the onions. You want about 1/2 of it to sit in the marinade. Do not submerge the pork shoulder in the marinade.

Combine the lemon juice and vinegar in a measuring cup. Pour it over the pork shoulder sitting in the baking dish. Using a sharp knife, create wedges in various places throughout the shoulder to place the garlic cloves in. You want the cloves to go in deep.

Now, sprinkle 1 Tablespoon of oregano and 1 tablespoon of garlic powder over the shoulder. Sprinkle half of the salt on the shoulder, and flip over. Repeat the oregano, garlic powder and salt seasoning on the other side of the shoulder. Cover with aluminum foil and let it marinate in the fridge overnight (or at least 4 hours). Flip the pork shoulder over, just before heading to bed or 2 hours into the marinating party. You want both sides to get marinated.

Before placing it in the oven you need to remove the baking dish from the refrigerator and let it get to room temperature. If you fail to do this the glass dish may break in your oven. So be sure to do this step. This should take about 1 hour or so. Just sit it in on your counter. Don’t forget about it, you don’t want it to sit there for 4 hours at room temperature. Just enough to remove the cold from the dish. You could avoid all this by using an aluminum disposable baking pan.

While it’s sitting on your counter, preheat your oven to 250 F.

When ready, place the aluminum sealed baking dish or pan onto the middle rack of your oven. Set your timer for 2 hours. After 2 hours, flip the pork shoulder over, cover again and raise the temperature to 350 F. Roast for another hour. Then remove the foil and cook for another hour.

After 4 hours of roasting … Check the temperature at the thickest part of the shoulder. It should read 170 F or a bit higher. Your pork should now be falling apart at the pull of a fork. Remove from the oven and serve as desired.