Dividing Up A Pork Shoulder

[IndyRob]

I found a deal on an 11 pound (bone-in) pork shoulder today.  I seem to recall an entertaining topic here on how many meals one could get out of a rotisserie chicken and am hoping for a similar topic for a pork shoulder.

 

Rather than just roasting the whole thing (which would be wasteful for a two person household),  how many, and what kinds of distinct meals could be made out of this?

[blue_dolphin]

Good question. I’m pretty sure I lack the wherewithal to divide one of these up myself but I’d love to know what would be the best way to ask the meat counter to portion it. 
The one time I did, the guy who cut it was berated by his coworker for cutting it the wrong way. It didn’t really matter to me as I mostly wanted to make a big batch of pulled pork but needed to use 2 pots and grind some for sausage but I’d be curious what else I could have requested. Some pork shoulder steaks seem like a good idea. 

[rotuts]

@IndyRob

 

just to be cealr with what you are starting with :

 

you have a shoulder  ie butt , rather than the picnic shoulder

 

which is more of the upper leg and lower shoulder

 

any pics ?

 

 

[IndyRob]

1 minute ago, rotuts said:

@IndyRob

 

just to be cealr with what you are starting with :

 

you have a shoulder  ie butt , rather than the picnic shoulder

 

which is more of the upper leg and lower shoulder

 

any pics ?

 

 

Yeah, it's a butt.

 

I imagine an 11 pound picnic shoulder would be notable.

[Smithy]

My darling and I liked to split the roast into 3 pieces: one boneless; one with the bone; and one bunch of pieces already cut into chunks to be marinated, skewered and cooked as souvlaki. The souvlaki (kebabs) were my favorite treatment because I liked the marinade and I liked serving the meat and sauce over a pilaf. My darling, who was more of the meat-and-potatoes persuasion, generally did one roast atop potatoes, all seasoned with Lipton's Onion Soup Mix. The other he'd usually do with potatoes again, but add sauerkraut toward the end. Each of those setups would give us leftovers for at least another meal apiece. On one or two occasions we had the boneless portion cut into thick pork steaks, then baked them in a breading.

 

Here are a few examples, possibly with a repeat:

Pork roast and potatoes

The way we had it cut (never mind muscle groups)

Pork roast with onion soup

 

 

[TdeV]

@Smithy, do you ever say how you make the onion soup one? Are they potatoes or onions in the pot? Then gravy, stock, or?

[FeChef]

On 11/5/2025 at 7:12 PM, Smithy said:

My darling and I liked to split the roast into 3 pieces: one boneless; one with the bone; and one bunch of pieces already cut into chunks to be marinated, skewered and cooked as souvlaki. The souvlaki (kebabs) were my favorite treatment because I liked the marinade and I liked serving the meat and sauce over a pilaf. My darling, who was more of the meat-and-potatoes persuasion, generally did one roast atop potatoes, all seasoned with Lipton's Onion Soup Mix. The other he'd usually do with potatoes again, but add sauerkraut toward the end. Each of those setups would give us leftovers for at least another meal apiece. On one or two occasions we had the boneless portion cut into thick pork steaks, then baked them in a breading.

 

Here are a few examples, possibly with a repeat:

Pork roast and potatoes

The way we had it cut (never mind muscle groups)

Pork roast with onion soup

 

 

This, and if you have a grinder, I like to grind some up for meatloaf and pork and shrimp wontons.

[Smithy]

5 hours ago, TdeV said:

@Smithy, do you ever say how you make the onion soup one? Are they potatoes or onions in the pot? Then gravy, stock, or?

 

We cut potatoes into chunks, usually nuked them a few minutes to give them a head start, then lined the bottom of a Dutch oven or slow cooker with them. We put the seasoned pork roast atop the potatoes, then packed enough chunks of potato around the edges to keep the pork from contacting the sides of the pot. The seasoning was generally one packet of the Onion Soup mix; then sometimes we'd pour another packet over the whole thing. (That depended on the whim of the day and the size of the pork roast.) The potato chunk sizes varied over the years; we ranged from slightly larger than 1" chunks (say, cutting a spud into eighths) down to 1/2" dice. If the chunks were small dice we'd skip the microwave step. At the most we'd add a cup of water to the bottom of the pot; usually the meat itself would release enough moisture to cook the potatoes and make a tasty gravy. I think we experimented with finely chopped onion, and maybe with chunks of carrot or celery, thrown into the mix, but at its simplest it was just the pork and potatoes with Lipton's Onion Soup Mix...which is now called Lipton's Recipe Secrets, incidentally.

 

In our earliest days together he did this all in a Crock Pot, then took the extra step of making gravy from the defatted juices after the cooking was complete. In later years we skipped that step. As I recall it was the classic gravy process: make a roux, pour the defatted juices into the pan, stir until it started to thicken, season with Worcestershire sauce. In later years we just enjoyed the juices without the gravy.

 

You can see the setup in this picture.

 

You can also see how he set up using the Crock Pot in this picture. The main difference there was that he added sauerkraut after the potatoes and meat had mostly cooked, and he did not make gravy. I'm pretty sure he didn't use the onion soup mix in this case.

[Rickbern]

There’s a fair few videos like this on YouTube 

 

 

[SLB]

My butts come divided into 3 smaller roasts, too.  I mean, that's how I request them.  I had pulled one out and had it seasoning hte last few days, and decided to do it a la Smithy's onion soup mix idea.  Except instead of potatoes, I have put green plaintains in the bottom.  The reason for this is, I bought these little mini-looking bananas the other day thinking that they were a sweet banana; I was coming from the gym and out of my mind with hunger for something sweet, and I saw the banana, and paid zero attention to the fact that they were plainly sitting next to the the plaintain bin, and not over by the sweet fruit.  I just bought em.  And nearly choked when I tried to shove one in my mouth outside the store, immediately after purchasing.  

 

So, I had a few mini VERYSTARCHY plaintains left.  They are now providing a bit of a bed bed for 2 pounds of pork butt that has been sprinkled with lipton onion soup mix.  I figured, I like mofongo with pork chunks in it, so . . . .

 

 

I'll report back.  

 

NB:  This butt looks like it's been brutalized because I cut out about a pound of it to separately confit for tacos.  I wasn't ravenous when I did that, but I must've been mad or something.  It looks like that butt got murdered, I realize.  

Edited 2 hours ago by SLB (log)

[blue_dolphin]

1 hour ago, SLB said:

My butts come divided into 3 smaller roasts, too.  I mean, that's how I request them. 

Novice here. How exactly do you make this request? 

Does “Please divide this into 3 roasts?” get what you want or are further instructions needed? 
As mentioned above, my previous request got the meat cutter in trouble for apparently doing it wrong so I’d like to be as specific as possible, given we don’t share fluency in a common language.