Wild Boar Shoulder Roast with Wild Bergamot Glaze
Oven-roasted wild boar shoulder gets a double-dose of foraged wild bergamot, first with a rub made from dried leaves and then coated with glaze featuring wild bergamot flower jelly. Whether you are a hunter looking for ways to cook up the boar you bagged, a forager looking for ways to use the wild bergamot you collected, or just an adventurous sort looking for an unforgettable meal, this recipe has you covered.
Ingredients
- 1 wild boar shoulder roast (boneless, 2-4 lbs)
- ½ tsp roasted garlic powder
- ½ tsp dried wild bergamot leaves crushed
- ½ tsp salt
- 1 cup wild bergamot flower jelly
- 3 Tbs maple syrup
- 1 Tbs Dijon mustard
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F. Remove skin from boar shoulder (if present), but leave most of the layer of fat beneath it.
- Combine roasted garlic powder, wild bergamot leaves, and salt. Rub generously over entire surface of boar roast.
- Heat jelly in a small bowl in the microwave or in a small saucepan on the stove just to the point of melting (it does not need to be hot). Remove from heat. Whisk in maple syrup and Dijon mustard until thoroughly combined.
- Set up roasting pan or casserole dish with a roasting rack. Place the roast on the rack, fat side facing up. (If you do not have a rack, a couple of celery stalks laid on the bottom of the pan work just as well).
- Roast boar shoulder in oven for about 30 minutes per pound. 15 minutes before the end of the cooking time, remove from the oven and brush or spoon the glaze over the roast until well covered. Return to the oven to finishing roasting for the remaining 15 minutes, or until an internal temperature of 140°-150°F is reached.
- Allow to rest for 20 minutes after removing from oven before slicing (meat should still be pink inside, but not bloody. Do not undercook wild meats!). Serve with any remaining glaze, if desired.
Notes
- Wild bergamot jelly is not something you are liable to find for sale, well... pretty much anywhere. You will need to make it yourself, and will most likely need to forage for the plant first. You can find all of the info you'll need for that in our post here.
- Ideally, you will have saved and dried some wild bergamot leaves when you collected the flowers for jelly. If you didn't (or ran out before deciding to make this recipe), oregano is an acceptable substitute.
- For those of us who are not up to the task of hunting them ourselves, wild boar is available from a variety of specialty/exotic meat suppliers and farms (the roast used in our photo came from Fossil Farms). Regular domesticated pork shoulder could be used in this recipe instead, but it does have a little different flavor and texture.
- Wild boar is best cooked to medium - pink, but not bloody (140°-150°F at the center). Overcooking can make the meat tough. Eating boar rare (or even domestic pork, for that matter) can expose you to pathogens such as Trichinella.
- The cooking time listed in this recipe assumes a 4 lb boneless shoulder is being used. Actual time will be more or less depending on the size of your roast. A bone-in roast will require significantly longer.