I work in 911 dispatch, so I frequently have to go back and relisten to calls I’ve taken to see if I heard something correctly

It was very weird at first hearing my own voice played back at me so much, but it’s something you get used to after a while

But even after 7 years on the job, if I think about it my voice on the recording never sounds quite right to me.

It does freeze well, so that’s a good option. Normally I do that, but in this case i actually pulled the shoulder out of my freezer trying to free up some space in there so I kind of didn’t want to fill it right back up.

If you’ve done a whole shoulder on a rotisserie I feel like you’ll appreciate this idea too- I’ve been to a couple parties and done it once myself where we roasted a whole lamb over a fire. I don’t have any pictures handy but look up “lamb al asador” to get an idea of what the setup looked like. If nothing else it’s a hell of a centerpiece to have for a party.

Just as a heads-up, unless you’re cooking for a lot of people or really like leftovers, you may want to look for a smaller cut than a whole shoulder because it is a lot of meat. After feeding my party guests (it wasn’t a huge party, but) and sending most of them home with leftovers, I still had enough left over to have it for lunch every day for the next week.

Yeah, I will admit I dropped the ball on that recently for my new years party. I bought a big thing of pre-sliced deli provolone to keep it simple because I was keeping things low-effort, and it did the job but I really wanted something sharper with it.

Even with some lackluster cheese though people still raved about it.

It was basically a whole day of cooking on paper, but there was maybe about 15 minutes of actual hands-on cooking and prep time, the rest was just letting the pork do its thing in the crock pot while I did other stuff, like panic-cleaning my house before company arrived.

I’m a Philly guy, everyone knows the cheesesteak, and almost anywhere outside of Philly you’re bound to get something that doesn’t really resemble an authentic cheesesteak. People have a lot of weird ideas about what the default toppings, cheese, types of bread, cuts of meat, etc. are supposed to be.

But a Philly style roast pork/pork italiano is a thing of beauty. It’s actually a little wild to me that it hasn’t caught on with the Instagram recipe crowd because it’s the kind of thing that’s actually pretty well-suited to just throwing stuff in a crock pot or pressure cooker.

Basically just a pork shoulder, the usual Italian spices and seasonings- rosemary, oregano, garlic, maybe some fennel seed, red pepper flakes, salt & pepper (usually pretty heavy on the rosemary)

Ideally give it a quick sear, but that’s sort of optional

Throw it in your crockpot with some cooking liquid, I normally do chicken stock, sometimes wine if I’m feeling fancy, maybe some canned tomatoes, perhaps some sliced or chopped onions

Or do it in an oven, I’m not your supervisor.

And cook until done. Some places slice it, others shred it. Do whatever you like.

Serve on a roll (if you’ve seen Philadelphians arguing over cheesesteaks before, this is basically the same debate you’ve seen before, the roll is important, it needs to be sturdy enough to hold up to a massive pile of meat dripping with jus and grease, but not so hard that you have to worry about it cracking in half or have a hard time taking a bite out of it, long or round rolls are both acceptable)

With some roasted hot peppers (usually long hots) and some sauteed broccoli rabe (or sometimes spinach) and provolone cheese