Slow-roasted miso pork shoulder for a crowd

The marinade is red miso, sugar, rosemary and a frankly indecent amount of black pepper. That is all of it, and it goes on in the morning so the roast can sit in the fridge thinking about it. The miso and sugar cook down into a crust the color of an old violin, and the meat underneath stays pale and soft. It feeds 12 to 16, and you will spend most of the afternoon with a drink in your hand.

1. Mix the miso, sugar, minced rosemary and pepper into a thick paste.
2. Trim the pork. Cut away any thick cap of fat on the outside and any hard white fat you can see on the surface, and leave the marbling inside alone, since that is what keeps a shoulder moist. If the roast is boneless, unroll it and cut along its natural seams to open it out like a book, without cutting all the way through. Rub the paste all over the meat in an even layer, into the seams too.
3. Roll it back into a rough cylinder if you opened it up, and tie it with kitchen twine at 1-inch intervals. Refrigerate in an airtight container 4 to 8 hours. This is the make-ahead, done the morning you plan to roast.
4. Take the pork out of the fridge an hour before it goes in the oven, which is about 4½ hours before you want to eat.
5. Heat the oven to 325°F. Wipe off any thick patches of marinade, since the sugar in them burns before the meat is done, and set the pork on a roasting pan or a sheet pan. Scatter the onion and rosemary sprigs around it and pour the ¼ cup water into the pan.
6. Roast 1 hour, then baste with the pan juices. Keep roasting and basting every 30 minutes until an instant-read thermometer reads 165°F in the thickest part, about 2 hours more. Once the crust is dark brown, tent the top with a sheet of parchment. Miso and sugar go from mahogany to bitter faster than you would credit.
7. Rest it on a board for at least 30 minutes, then cut away the twine and slice.

Serve it ssam style and stay out of the way. Put out a stack of lettuce leaves, a bowl of hot white rice, kimchi and a scallion-ginger sauce. For the sauce, put the scallions, ginger and salt in a heatproof bowl, heat the neutral oil until it just smokes and pour it over. Everyone takes a leaf, adds a slice of pork, a spoon of rice, some kimchi and the sauce, and eats it in two bites. Nobody needs a knife and nobody needs telling.

There will be leftovers, and they are the point. Sliced cold pork with pickled carrots, cucumber, cilantro and a streak of sriracha in a baguette is a very respectable banh mi, and warmed through in a pita with whatever sauce is left over, it is lunch for days.