There are lots of recipes for what to do with a pork shoulder. If you were looking, you can’t go wrong with this one from Dinner: A Love Story, which is what I planned to do last week. Then I caught a cold. It wasn’t a bad cold but I felt slow and tired and things that were supposed to be cooked on Sunday, did not get cooked.

On Monday morning, I still felt lousy but I was in no way sick enough to be off work. So not only did I have to drag myself from my bed but I needed to make a plan for the evening that involved minimal effort before I could get an early night.

Enter the slow cooker. I sliced two onions and bashed three cloves of garlic and threw them in the slow cooker, they were followed by a cup of chicken stock (you could use a cube if needed, I had stock made in the slow cooker over the weekend). I mixed together 1 and half tablespoons of brown sugar, a teaspoon of sea salt, a teaspoon of smoked paprika and half a teaspoon of ground cumin and rubbed it into the 3lb/1.37kg (don’t be too precious about the weight) pork shoulder, put it in the slow cooker with the other ingredients and set it to high. It was 7am.

That done, I got ready for work.

When I got home it was all done. I took the meat out,  shredded it and dinner was done.