This recipe from Korean chef and mini-mogul David Chang, of the Momofuku empire, first appeared in the New York Times in 2012. The recipe will feed about 10.
Pork Butt
1 whole bone-in pork butt (8-10 lbs) with excess fat trimmed off
1 cup white sugar
1 cup plus 1 tablespoon kosher salt
7 tablespoons brown sugar
Preparation
Place pork in large, shallow bowl. Mix the white sugar and 1 cup of salt together in another bowl, then rub mixture all over the meat. Cover with plastic wrap and place in trig for at least 6 hours or overnight.
Heat oven to 300 F. Remove pork from frig, discard any juices, wipe off most of the sugar/salt coating. Place pork in roasting pan (a disposal pan will save a lot of clean up work) and cook for approximately 6 hours or until it collapses, yielding easily to the tines of a fork. (After first hour, baste hourly with pan juices.) Remove meat from oven and allow it to rest for up to an hour.
When ready to serve, turn oven to 500 F. In small bowl stir together the remaining tablespoon of salt with the brown sugar. Rub this mixture all over the cooked pork. (Adding a little cider vinegar to the salt/sugar mixture will make it easier to evenly coat the meat.) Place in oven for approximately 10-15 minutes or until a dark caramel crust has developed on the meat.
Serve entire pork butt uncut on a tray. Pull some pork, put it on a leaf of bibb lettuce, then add either the ginger-scallion sauce or the ssam sauce. Eat with fingers.