allow dinners to pick and pull at it with their fingers, offering a few sauces to work with on the side Try sweetand-spicy nuoc cham, Chinese-style char siu, Cuban mojo, or a bright Argentinian chimichurri Or, better yet, since this is a pork party, throw out a whole selection Also see the suggestions in the note here Shredded roasted pork shoulder is excellent on its own, even better in sandwiches with a bit of coleslaw, and it makes an excellent addition to soups, stews, taco fillings, Cuban sandwiches, empanada fillings, arepa stuffings, hash, omelets, etc It’s nearly as difficult to mess up slow-cooked pork shoulder as it is to bring the sucker to the table without eating half the skin yourself before it arrives Slow-roasting followed by a blast at high heat creates skin that blisters and bubbles, adding surface area for extra crunch NO BUTTS ABOUT IT Y ou may have seen large cuts of pork in the supermarket labeled “pork butt,” but a few ninthgrade classes in physiology would have told you that what you were looking at was not a butt but a shoulder What’s up with the odd labeling? Pork shoulder and pork butt are the same cut of meat, and it’s an oddity of nomenclature, not anatomy, that makes them so Turns out that in the early nineteenth century, New England was a porkproduction powerhouse The loins, bellies, and hams were eagerly snatched up by native New Englanders, but the far less desirable shoulder cut (obviously, the Yanks didn’t know jack about BBQ; some argue they still don’t) was packed into wooden barrels and shipped out across the country The barrels came in different sizes, but the ones pork was packed into were of the size officially known as “butt” or “pipe.” That’d be a 126-gallon barrel, half the size of a 252gallon tun, larger than a 84-gallon firkin, and twice the size of a 63-gallon hogshead (which, incidentally, has nothing to do with actual hogs or heads) The pork-filled butt-sized barrels shipped out across the country came to be known as Boston butts, a term that was soon applied to the meat ... were eagerly snatched up by native New Englanders, but the far less desirable shoulder cut (obviously, the Yanks didn’t know jack about BBQ; some argue they still don’t) was packed into wooden barrels and shipped out across the country The barrels came in... are the same cut of meat, and it’s an oddity of nomenclature, not anatomy, that makes them so Turns out that in the early nineteenth century, New England was a porkproduction powerhouse The loins, bellies, and hams... firkin, and twice the size of a 63-gallon hogshead (which, incidentally, has nothing to do with actual hogs or heads) The pork-filled butt-sized barrels shipped out across the country came to