Pork Roast with Mushrooms and Onions

Name: Pork Roast with Mushrooms and Onions in Clay Pots
Prep time: 2 h
Cook time: 1 h
Total time: 3 h
Cuisine: Bulgarian cuisine
Ingredients: Pork 300 g; Button mushrooms or oyster mushrooms 150 g; Onion 2-3; Garlic 1 head; Butter 50 g; Water 0.5 cup (1/4 cup per pot) (100 ml); Bay leaf 2; Dried hot chili pepper 2-4; Dried savory 0.5 tsp; Ground coriander a pinch; Salt, black pepper to taste

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3 h

I love meat that’s cooked properly, especially a roast with mushrooms. Not just a piece of meat, but a dish that pleases the eye, is served with some imagination, and tastes great.

Cutlets are on the menu too, and so are chops. But well-cooked meat with seasonings is what I love most. And also potatoes with mushrooms — with butter mushrooms and porcini.

With all the cookware we have today, the oldest pot of all is probably the clay one. Our ancestors used it every day: to store food, to cook it and to eat from. As they say, you can’t cook soup in your palms or carry water in a sieve.

Almost every people that lived on Earth in ancient times had clay pots. Clay is easy to find and easy to work. It is also non-toxic and doesn’t oxidize. Food in a clay pot isn’t fried, it is stewed and baked. You can cook almost any dish in clay. In the Slavic countries, local national cuisines use the clay pot widely.

In restaurant kitchens, a roast with mushrooms and onions is rarely cooked in individual pots. Most often it is cooked in one big cauldron or pot, then divided into small pots and baked separately. At home it’s quite realistic to cook such dishes for your family in small pots. The roast with mushrooms and onions that I’m offering here is very simple to make.

More with pork and mushrooms

Pork Chops with Mushrooms Baked under Cheese

1 h

Pork with Mushrooms in Soy Sauce

1 h

Kavarma with Pork and Porcini Mushrooms

1 h 30 min

Spaghetti with Ground Pork and Mushrooms

Ingredients

2 servings

Pork 300 g
Button mushrooms or oyster mushrooms 150 g
Onion 2-3
Garlic 1 head
Butter 50 g
Water 0.5 cup (1/4 cup per pot) (100 ml)
Bay leaf 2
Dried hot chili pepper 2-4
Dried savory 0.5 tsp
Ground coriander a pinch
Salt, black pepper to taste

Step-by-step recipe

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How to prepare the pork

You can use almost any meat for this dish, but pork makes the cooking easier and much quicker. A roast with mushrooms turns out well with shoulder or the hind leg. It’s better not to use the neck end or the rump.
Prepare the meat: remove the bones and membranes from the pork; you can leave any leftover fat. Cut it into small pieces, about 3 cm.
Marinate the pork with spices: put the pieces of meat in a ceramic or glass dish, season with pepper, and sprinkle with 0.5 tsp of dried savory and a pinch of ground coriander. Put the meat in the fridge for 2 hours.
It’s better not to salt the meat beforehand, so it doesn’t start to release its juices. There’s no need to marinate the pork in wine or vinegar; it’s enough for the pork to take on the aroma of coriander and savory.

How to fry the meat, onion and mushrooms

Fry the pork with garlic: in a saucepan over medium heat, melt half of the butter (25 g) and add the pieces of pork and the unpeeled garlic cloves.
Fry until the meat gets a golden-brown crust, and salt it lightly at the end.
Divide the meat among the pots: into two individual ceramic pots, put one bay leaf each and the fried pork with garlic, dividing the meat equally. Add 1-2 dried hot chili peppers to each.
In a frying pan, in the remaining butter over medium heat, fry the onion, cut into thick strips, until golden.
Add the mushrooms to the onion, salt lightly and fry together.
Which mushrooms to use is up to you. In season you can use fresh wild mushrooms, such as porcini, while button mushrooms and oyster mushrooms are available all year round.
Fry the mushrooms over a little less than medium heat until they release their juice and start turning golden.

How to stew the roast in the oven

Divide the mushrooms and onion equally among the pots.
Add a quarter cup of water to each pot.
Cover the pots with lids and put them in an oven preheated to 240 °C until the liquid starts to boil. You can easily tell when it boils by a thin stream of steam coming from under the lids or from the hole in the lid, if there is one.
Once it boils, reduce the oven temperature to 180 °C and leave the meat with mushrooms to stew under the lids for 15 mins.
Take the lids off the pots and stew the meat until the liquid inside the pots has completely boiled away.
Keep an eye on the dish: even though it’s hard for meat to burn in a ceramic pot, you still need to check. Once the liquid has boiled away, the roast will start to fry and you’ll hear the typical sizzling sound.
From the moment the sizzling starts, cook the roast for no more than 10 mins. If you like, and the recipe allows it, you can stir the roast and fry it for another 5 mins.

Serving

Serve the roast hot, straight from the oven, right in the individual pots. Everyone can spoon it onto their plate themselves.
Boiled potatoes or mashed potatoes make an ideal side dish for the roast with mushrooms. Though the dish is very tasty on its own, too.
Sometimes boiled beans, baked eggplant or chicken liver fried in flour are added to the roast with mushrooms and onions.