Captain Kinopio wrote:Care to share your pulled pork recipe? Every time I attempt it it's either too complex or just turns out gooseberry fool.
Get yourself a pork shoulder, any good butchers will have one. Leave it overnight in a mix of water, molasses and sea salt, commonly called a brine. Take it out, pat it dry, apply a rub (see below), wrap it in foil, might need 2-3 layers, then into a low oven, 120C is plenty, for about 8 hours, the longer you can leave it the better. Once its done, carefully take it out, there will be lots of liquid in the bottom of the foil, thats why you wrap it so tight, I find putting it on a rack thats in a deep roasting tin before I open it will catch all the juice, you could keep it to make a gravy or use it in a BBQ sauce if you fancy but I just use a bit of it to moisten the meat after I shred it. Speaking of shredding, when its out of the oven and foil turn it over so its skin side down, the bones should just lift out with little to no resistance then attack the meat with 2 forks to shred it all up. Once its done you can add in some of the liquid or throw on some BBQ sauce if you want, I usually let people sauce it to their liking though.
For the rub you can use any BBQ rub you like really, Ive used this one a couple of times and its pretty damn good:
1 tbsp ground cumin
1 tbsp garlic powder
1 tbsp onion powder
1 tbsp chili powder
1 tbsp cayenne pepper
1 tbsp salt
1 tbsp ground pepper
1 tbsp paprika
1/2 cup brown sugar
Ive started to leave out the cayenne pepper though, you want a gentle heat from the rub not a fire in your mouth, just remember to pack on as much as you can, push it into every nook and cranny of the meat before you put it in the oven. And this one is just an example, try out any rub you like on it, can even put it in with no rub and youll get beautiful pork, the rub will just help bring out a more BBQ flavour.
It sounds like a lot of work but its 5 mins to prep the brine, 5 mins to prep it for the oven, you can then head off and do what you gotta do for the day, then its 10-15 mins to get it out of the oven and shred it all up. It takes a long time but youre not doing much work at it, let the oven, the brine and the rub do all the work for you. Serve it on a bap with coleslaw and homemade BBQ sauce and you cant go wrong.