Teriyaki Pork Roast

Cold snap Monday. Twenty-four degrees at five in the morning, the first hard freeze of the season. Mom went out at six to bring in the last of the herbs and to harvest the brussels sprouts that had been waiting for the frost to sweeten them. The brussels sprouts have arrived. The rest of the garden is finished except for the parsnips and carrots, which I will leave in the ground and pull as needed through November. The pumpkins have been picked. The squash is in the cellar. The cold storage is ready for winter.

Cole called Tuesday. Tara has been having some bleeding. They are at the doctor now. I told him to call me back when they know. He called back at eleven. The bleeding is minor and the baby is fine and Tara is on bed rest for a week as a precaution. They are scared. I am scared. Mom is scared. Patrick is scared. We have all decided to be scared quietly and to hold on to the fact that the doctor said the baby is fine. I drove up to Bozeman Wednesday with a cooler full of food I had made for them — soup, a casserole, bread, cookies, apples from the tree, two dozen eggs, a frozen elk roast for next week. Tara cried when she saw the food. She is hormonal. She is scared. She is allowed. Cole hugged me longer than Cole usually hugs anyone. I drove home Wednesday night. Tara texted Thursday: bleeding stopped, baby moving, doctor pleased. Mom and I cried at the kitchen table at the news.

I did not do farrier work this week. Cancelled three appointments and rescheduled them for next week. The Tuesday news made me unable to focus and the Wednesday Bozeman trip burned the day and Thursday I did chores in a fog and Friday I sat on the porch with Patrick for three hours not talking, just sitting. He did not ask why I had cancelled the work. He understood. We sat. The brussels sprouts came on the table for dinner Friday — roasted with bacon, the bacon from a hog Cole and Tara had butchered in February, the brussels sprouts from twenty feet away. Patrick had a plateful. Mom had a plateful. I had a plateful. The food was right. The day was hard. The food was right.

Saturday the AA guys came over but I was not in cookout shape and Marcus saw it within five minutes of getting there and took over the firepit. He had brought ribs of his own — beef ribs from a half-cow he had bought from me last month — and he set up the smoker and ran it himself for the rest of the day. Marcus running my cookout was something I had not anticipated. He said, You take a Saturday off. He said, You have given me forty-nine of these. You take one. So I took one. I sat on the porch with Patrick for the afternoon and Marcus and the others ran the fire and made the food and at six in the evening they brought a plate over to the porch for Patrick and one for me and Marcus said, You eat with your dad tonight, and we did. The men ate by the fire and Patrick and I ate on the porch and at one point Patrick said, Your friends are good. I said, Yeah, Dad. They are. He nodded. He ate his ribs. The light went. The men around the fire laughed at something — I heard it from the porch — and Patrick smiled at the sound of it. We went inside at eight. He went to bed. I came back out and the fire was still going and Marcus was still there with two of the new guys and they had a pot of coffee on and we sat for another hour. Marcus said quietly, Tara is going to be fine, and I said, Yeah, she is, and we left it at that.

Sunday I cooked a roast — beef chuck, slow-braised in the Dutch oven for five hours with onions and carrots and a head of garlic and a bottle of stout I had bought in 2017 and that I had been saving for a roast I wanted to make special. The beer was old enough that it cooked off into something dark and almost coffee-flavored, and the meat broke down into something so tender you could eat it with a spoon. Mom said it was the best roast I had ever made. I said, This was a roast for a hard week, Mom. She said, Then it was the right roast. Patrick had three helpings. Mom had two. I had two. The week was hard. The food was right. The fire helps. The food helps. Marcus running the fire when I could not run it helps most. The week was hard. We came through it. We do.

The roast I made that Sunday was beef — chuck braised in the last of a stout I’d been saving — and I wrote about it because it was the right thing for that exact week. But the roast I reach for most, the one I put on when a week has ground me down and I need the house to smell like something good before I have to think about anything else, is this teriyaki pork. It goes in the pot, it does its work, and four hours later Patrick comes in from the living room without being asked and sits down at the table. That’s the whole review.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 6–8 hours | Total Time: 6–8 hours 10 minutes | Servings: 6–8

Ingredients

3–4 lb boneless pork shoulder or loin roast
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup honey
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 tablespoon cornstarch
2 tablespoons cold water

Instructions

Make the sauce. In a bowl, whisk together the soy sauce, brown sugar, honey, rice vinegar, garlic, ginger, and black pepper until the sugar is dissolved.
Load the slow cooker. Place the pork roast in the slow cooker and pour the teriyaki sauce evenly over the top, turning the roast once to coat.
Cook low and slow. Cover and cook on LOW for 6–8 hours, or on HIGH for 3–4 hours, until the pork is fork-tender and pulling apart at the edges.
Rest the roast. Transfer the pork to a cutting board, tent loosely with foil, and let it rest for 10 minutes.
Thicken the sauce. Whisk the cornstarch with the cold water until smooth, then stir it into the cooking juices remaining in the slow cooker. Cook on HIGH, uncovered, for 10–15 minutes until the sauce thickens to a glaze.
Slice and serve. Slice or pull the pork and arrange on a platter. Spoon the thickened teriyaki glaze generously over the top. Serve with rice or mashed potatoes to catch the sauce.

Nutrition (per serving)

Teriyaki Pork Roast — A Roast for a Hard Week