Tuesday 15 June 2010

The Best Ever Pulled Pork

Pulled pork is one of the holy grails of all-American real style barbecue cooking and we've been working on our method for about a month or so. Naturally you get the best results with super long, slow cooking over a low bbq but that requires constant tending for at least 10 hours and a Sunday is only so long... I can't claim credit for this wondrous dish, but here is how we did it: Preheat your oven to just around 50 or 60C, then smother your piece of rolled, boned shoulder of pork with brown sugar, salt, pepper, a mixture of spices such as ground coriander, paprika and chilli. Put on a trivet over apple juice and create a tent with foil so it essentially steam cooks. After around 30 minutes you can remove the crackling and set to one side to crackle up later on. Leave to cook for about four hours, testing once in a while with a well judged prod - it should be yielding and soft.
If you think it's getting too hard then you can always turn the oven down. Give it a blast at 180C for around 5-10 minutes before the end of cooking, then remove to rest. Reserve the juices in the pan for later. Take the crackling and roast in a really hot oven (200C) until bubbly and delightful. Now the laborious bit! To achieve perfect 'pulled' pork, you have to separate all the fibres of the meat by hand. If you cook over a bbq you can do this with a fork as it yields much more tender meat. Shred the meat finely, and add the cooking juices with apple juice. At this stage you can add bbq sauce if you like but we tend to reduce the cooking liquid down instead. Stuff into white pappy rolls and enjoy with home made coleslaw. Yee ha!

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