Slow Cooker Cottage Roll With Vegetables

For a tasty and low cost supper, put a cottage roll in the slow cooker after breakfast, and it will be ready in time for your supper! It looks a bit like ham, but has a different texture, and a saltier flavour.

What’s a Cottage Roll?

Cottage is a brined boneless pork shoulder butt. The meat is tied with string or netting, so it stays in a “roll” shape, during the brining and cooking.

• Cottage roll is popular in Canada, and in some regions, it’s called cottage ham.
• The meat is usually sold at a good price, so it’s an easy and economical supper
• Some cottage rolls have lots of fat, so check the grocery store packages, to pick  the leanest one

Fun Fact: According to Wikipedia, in the colonial days, New England butchers stored pork in special barrels that were called “butts”. Eventually, this shoulder cut became known as pork butt.

In the diagram below, I’ve marked the location of the pork shoulder butt (blade).

Cottage Roll With Vegetables

Serves 6     Prep: 15 min     Cook: 6-8 hrs

Important: Cook to an internal temperature of 160°F (71°C).

Ingredients

• 1 (3 lb) cottage roll (cottage ham)
  • If the cottage roll has netting, leave it on
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 5 carrots, peeled and sliced in 2 inch lengths
• 5 medium potatoes, peeled and cut in quarters
• 1 cup chopped cabbage or coleslaw mix (optional)
• 2 celery stalks
• ground black pepper – Do NOT add salt!
• (optional) Dijon or yellow mustard when serving

Directions

1. Place cottage roll in a 6-quart slow cooker
2. Surround it with chopped vegetables. (You can add as many as will fit or what you need for supper)
3. Sprinkle with pepper, and cover the cottage roll with water
4. Cottage roll is already salty, so do NOT add salt in the slow cooker
5. Cook in the slow cooker on high 6 hours or low 8-10 hours.
6. After cooking, the cottage roll should fall apart like a pot roast.
7. Serve in flat bowls, or pasta bowls, and top with Dijon mustard.

Note: You could cook the cottage roll in the oven, instead. Bake at 300°F, for 3 hours.

Cottage Roll Tips

Here are a few tips to make the preparation easier

• Use your food processor to quickly slice the onion, carrots, and celery
• Or, use 1-2 cups of frozen mirepoix (carrots, onions, celery) instead of the chopped vegetables
• You could cook the cottage roll in the oven, instead. Bake at 300°F, for 3 hours.
• You can make cottage roll without all the vegetables, and cook the veggies separately. That will keep them from getting too salty! Just put onion, bay leaves, and peppercorns into the slow cooker, for flavouring.

Cottage Roll Without Vegetables

Cottage Roll Meat Shrinkage

Cottage rolls are usually sold at a good price, but they’re made from a fatty cut of meat. We discard all of the fat, so the price per pound of actual meat is much higher.

For example, the latest cottage roll that we cooked showed 1.338 kg on the package (2.95 lbs).

There was a large piece of fat on the roll, so I cut that off after cooking it.

Also, when I sliced the cottage roll, there was another fatty section in the middle of the roll. I cut most of that off, after the meat was sliced.

Here’s a short video that Keith took, while I made a slice. Unlike most cottage rolls that I’ve cooked, this one wasn’t falling apart!

Here’s the cleaned-up meat, on a small plate.

On our kitchen scale, I adjusted for the weight of the plate, and checked the weight of the cleaned-up meat. The meat weight was 492 g, which is 1.08 lb.

Cottage Roll Actual Cost

The cottage roll was on sale for $7.69 per kilogram (3.49 per pound). But it wasn’t such a bargain after I did some math

• The total cost was 10.29, which is much lower than most other packages of meat.
• However, after cooking the cottage roll and trimming off most of the fat, there wasn’t much meat left.
• We started with 1.338 kg (2.95 lb), and ended with 0.492 kg (1.08 lb)
• So the actual cost was 20.91 per kg (9.53 per lb).
  • My Excel calculations are shown below
• That’s almost 3 times the sale price!

Cottage Roll Leftovers

If there’s any cottage roll meat left over, I like to tear it into small pieces, and use it for sandwiches, or in a casserole.

Here’s one of my recent lunch sandwiches, with a bit of yellow mustard, on whole grain bread.

• Remember – you don’t need to add any salt to cottage roll meat!

Cooking Instructions From Package

On the Fletcher’s Cottage Roll package, there are the following instructions for cooking in liquid, or roasting in the oven. There are also instructions for glazing the cottage roll after it’s cooked.

Important: Cook to an internal temperature of 160°F (71°C).

To cook in liquid:

1. In large saucepan or Dutch oven, place cottage roll, and cover with enough water to cover the mat.
2. Add onions, garlic, bay leaf and peppercorns.
3. Over high heat, heat to boiling.
4. Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer until meat is fork-tender (approximately 2 hours)
5. Drain

To roast:

1. Preheat oven to 325°F (160°C).
2. Place cottage roll in Dutch oven or roasting pan.
3. Add 2 cups water, onions, garlic, bay leaf and peppercorns.
4. Cover and cook 35-40 minutes per pound, approximately 2 hours.

To glaze:

1. Remove netting and place roll in baking dish.
2. Bake in preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 10 to 15 minutes, spooning glaze over.

Slow Cooker is Best

We used to make this cottage roll recipe in the oven, or on the stove top. But Keith tried it in the slow cooker one day, and that’s how we’ve made it ever since!

Here’s why we like to make our cottage roll in the slow cooker now.

• In the oven, or on the stove top, we had to check the cottage roll occasionally, to make sure it didn’t dry out.
  • Also, the pot ended up with baked-on bits, that were hard to scrub off.
• In the slow cooker, we can ignore the cottage roll all day, or even run out to do a few errands!
  • At supper time, we have a hot and delicious meal, with easy clean up.

Our Rival Crock-Pot Slow Cooker

Here’s a photo of our slow cooker, from the front. It’s a Rival Crock-Pot Model C3154/3, and I think we got it in the late 1980s.

However, when I searched online, this model is described as “discontinued” and “vintage”. Are things from the 80s really vintage?

And here’s a close-up view of the label and dial. It’s a very simple slow cooker, with Off, Low and High settings only.

We’ve also got a fancy, programmable slow cooker, and an Instant Pot, but most of the time I like to use this older, simpler Crock-Pot!

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Slow Cooker Cottage Roll With Vegetables

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