Most of the time I like chicken just fine. Nine times out of ten, if I’m walking into a serious Mexican restaurant, I’m praying they serve pollo asado/asada and my heart is glad when they say yes, and they’re not out of it yet, today of blessed days.

But on the tenth time, I will want and possibly need something like a pork chili verde.

Cooking for myself at home, that’s maybe five out of ten times, that I’d prefer it most.

Also. Out past the bird, the pig is by far the cheapest meat in these disgustingly inflationary times. Pound for pound, on an average day in the tragic local market, it is half the price of beef and sometimes half the price of regular cow hamburger. Thus …

I have been buying and cooking and eating a lot of it and I’m going to share my rapidly developing method to do the same, dependably to perfection.

First off, get a roast. The bigger the better, and the cheaper too. Even a smallish one (like three pounds) will feed a smallish person for days.

I don’t know anything about the different cuts–can’t much tell the difference between a shoulder and a tenderloin, in deliciousness. I’m shopping on price. So if you have any ideas about the superiority of one part over another, please educate me back.

Get it put in your fridge right away and make sure the package won’t leak. You do not want to be cleaning up greasy and possibly harmful pink juice from half your shelves in there (ask me how I know, or just imagine). What I do is leave it in the plastic grocery bag they give me at the unenlightened rural place here, but if your market is saving the planet (or just decreasing their own margins), figure out some other way to keep it from making a mess.

When you’re ready to cook, set the package in your empty sink.

Decide on your baking/roasting dish. I have a Pyrex one and a metal rack that fits inside it exactly.

Cut the package open in the sink bottom and consider those scissors (or that knife) to be fouled–don’t use it for anything else before a thorough sterilizing. Lift the naked chunk out of the packaging carefully with your hands (just one hand if you can manage it) and throw the packaging directly into the trash bag that you smartly had sitting right next to the sink. Set the whole chunk in place in its baking dish. Now your hand(s) are fouled too. Act accordingly.

Done right, this means that you’re only touching the raw meat once (optionally once more at the spicing stage), and the only other necessary cleanup is to the bottom of your sink, which is easy.

Oil and spice your roast.

Some people insist on rubbing these items into the meat, and maybe that’s better … but it creates more mess than I want to deal with. I just drizzle a cheaper oil (avocado instead of olive) and sprinkle the spice powders (for me that’s just salt, pepper, and cayenne or whatever’s hot). I do both sides–touching the meat once more to flip it–but that’s the second, optional touching.

With clean or re-cleaned hands, put your baking dish, with the roast, into a pre-heated oven.

You are totally done with the hard part, not including dishes.

Now … some people say it’s just twenty minutes per pound at 375 Fahrenheit.

Others say go to 425 for the first 15 minutes (I do this) and then drop to 375 for the remainder of the hour (or whatever pounds times 20 minutes works out to for you).

At this point you’re supposed to be done according to the Chefs of the Tubes. That’s fine, if you like your pork rare … personally I find a pink center on a pork roast to be gross and maybe even dangerous.

So at the appointed time, I stick a meat thermometer into the middle. It will generally read about 130 (eww). I crank the oven back up to 450 at this point, leaving the thermometer stuck deep in the center (it’s the old manual-not-digital kind). I leave it until the internal temperature is well past 150 and on the way toward 160.

Somewhere in the 155-160 range I shut off the oven, pull the baking dish out, and clean off the thermometer (it’s going to be hot enough to roast flesh, obviously, so be careful with your own).

Next, even though it’s messy, I’ll gently transfer the smoking roast to a second (serving-style) dish, with spatula and fork or whatever works. You want a dish with sides, rather than a flat cutting board, because once you cut in, in a few minutes, there’s going to be a lot of juice flowing out. Try to have the burning hot dish as close as possible to the cooler serving one, so you don’t have to balance a multi-pound roast on a spatula halfway across the kitchen.

I rest the cooked meat briefly and then cut the whole in half ASAP to triple check, visually, that the whole thing is well-done to my satisfaction.

Then I cut another piece from the center and try not to burn myself eating it hot–sopping up some of the pan juices in a decadent paroxysm.

My general practice is to then stuff myself full immediately, and share cooled bits with whatever lucky creatures are around.

You want to get the roasting dish (and/or rack) into hot soapy water as soon as it’s safe, to minimize on scrubbing time and dishpan hands.

When you’re full to the gills, or as full as you feel like being, store what’s left, back to the fridge, for later, in whatever form is best for the way you eat. I like to have sliced and diced little chunks for creating amazing tacos the next day and the day after that too.

Regardless of whether it is anywhere near a Tuesday.