Pork Shoulder Steak: Pan-Fried Bone-In Pork Steak

Pork Shoulder Steak

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Making a pork steak is easy and, what matters, it doesn’t take long. A bone-in pork shoulder cut in one big piece is sold in stores, or at the market you can always ask the butcher to cut it from a whole leg the way you need. The meat doesn’t even need pounding or any special preparation. Pork fried as a single piece needs no side dish, just vegetables, bread and a sauce.

Around the world, people usually call a piece of beef a steak. Literally, steak is simply a piece of meat, whatever kind it is. When it is beef, people often write beef steak, which means a beefsteak or roast beef. Still, steak culture is highly developed and even popular in many countries, so in the vast majority of cases the kind of meat isn’t mentioned, because it is understood.

It is common to use meat from the leg, back or loin, which parallels how you choose cuts from a beef carcass, but cooking pork has its subtleties. I read somewhere that a piece of pork should be fried more slowly, because the meat contains a lot of collagen and needs time to become less tough. That is why the recipe quite often includes a stewing step in a sauce after frying.

For pork steak, people usually take the shoulder, the shoulder muscle, cut as a big thick piece with a bit of the shoulder blade at the edge. By and large, there is nothing complicated or exotic about it: it is meat fried on both sides. By the way, there are very elaborate versions too. In Great Britain, a popular dish is boston butt, a pork shoulder with or without the bone, cooked in a special way on a grill or in a pan.

Pork shoulder is very convenient to cook. The piece of meat should be 3-5 cm thick, with the shoulder bone at the edge and a small amount of fat. It is better not to freeze the meat, because it will be much juicier.

You don’t need to pound the meat for frying; it is guaranteed to cook through and stay tender. The important thing is to sear the piece over high heat at the very beginning so a golden crust forms, which keeps the meat juicy while you cook it all the way through. Never cover the pan with a lid, because the meat will simply boil in the steam trapped inside. For extra aroma, we will fry in a mix of fats, butter with vegetable oil.

9 ingredientsTo the recipe
More with pork neck or shoulder

Ingredients

2 servings

  • Bone-in pork shoulder cut, 3-5 cm thick (400 g) 2
  • Butter 1 tbsp
  • Odorless vegetable oil (olive or sunflower) 1 tbsp
  • Salt, black pepper to taste
  • Ground coriander a pinch
  • Paprika (better coarsely ground dried red pepper) a pinch
  • Dried aromatic herbs (parsley, oregano, savory, marjoram) a pinch
  • For serving
  • Fresh cucumbers and tomatoes, herbs, bread to taste
  • Tomato sauce (lutenitsa or homemade ketchup) to taste

Step-by-step recipe

Preparing the meat

  1. Pieces of meat from the shoulder of the carcass are usually cut across the grain, and they fry very well. If you are going to cook other meat, take its structure into account. Pieces are often cut along the grain, and those should be pounded a little. The bone gives the dish a special charm and makes it close to a pork entrecote or a natural cutlet, only a very big one.

  2. Wash the bone-in pieces of shoulder, then pat them dry with paper towels.

    Pork shoulder.

  3. Check the meat for small bone splinters and remove them. They often stick to the meat and end up in the finished dish.

  4. Salt and pepper the meat and sprinkle with a pinch of ground coriander and paprika. It is best to use not the store-bought paprika ground to dust, but dried red pepper, coarsely ground.

  5. I advise sprinkling with an extra pinch of dried aromatic herbs. Mixes are sold in stores, made of parsley, oregano, savory, marjoram and so on.

    Meat with spices.

Frying the steak

  1. As I said, my steak recipe means frying the meat in a pan in a mix of vegetable oil and butter. If you like, you can fry the pork as a piece on a charcoal grill or barbecue, brushing the meat with a little vegetable oil first. For cooking at home in the kitchen, it is better to use an ordinary frying pan.

  2. Heat a piece of butter in the pan and add a little odorless vegetable oil, olive or sunflower.

  3. Add the meat and sear over high heat until a solid dark golden crust forms, about 3-4 mins.

  4. Turn the pieces of pork over and fry the other side until a crust forms.

  5. Reduce the heat to below medium. Turning often, keep frying until the steaks are cooked through, another 15-20 mins or so. When you pierce the finished meat near the bone, the juice runs clear, with no pink.

    Don’t cover the pan with a lid, or the steam will simply boil the meat. It will also lose its juiciness.

    Meat fried until browned.

Serving

  1. When we cook big pieces of meat, we usually don’t add a side dish.

  2. Slice fresh cucumbers and tomatoes, add herbs and a piece of fresh bread.

  3. Serve the steak hot, with sauce. Don’t add a sauce that is too spicy or strongly flavored. Homemade lutenitsa made from peppers and eggplant works best, as does tomato ketchup, which is easy to make from fresh tomatoes.

    pork steak

    This is an excellent main course and a good option for a hearty dinner. By the way, at lunch the meat can be served with red wine and pickled sweet onion with herbs.

Calories and macros

1055 kcal

Serving ≈ 310 g

  • Protein69 g27% of kcal
  • Fat84 g73% of kcal
  • Carbs0 g0% of kcal

100 g340 kcalProtein 22.2 gFat 27.2 gCarbs 0 g

Calculated from the recipe ingredients, excluding salt and spices. Data: USDA and Matvaretabellen.

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