Slow Roast Pork Adventure
Sam scored a slow cooker a.k.a. crock pot over the holiday weekend.
I followed up by purchasing a giant pork shoulder butt yesterday.
You, The Scrabbled, must now continue this by giving me recipes, instructions, pointers, tidbits on making some slow-roasted pulled pork.
Comments
Bone in or out? I’ll give you the pulled pork recipe I use that is outfucking standing. It’s better bone-in because you get a bit more flavor, but boneless is fine, too.
1. Dice an onion. Put it at the bottom of your crock pot.
2. Place the pork shoulder on top of the diced onion in the crock pot.
3. Pour a can of ginger-ale in the crock pot.
4. Add whatever spices or liquids you think are nice. I change it up every time, but I usually add some worcestershire sauce, some honey, lots of garlic powder, and some liquid smoke here.
5. Dice another onion. Put it on top of the pork shoulder and around the sides.
Do this before you go to bed and leave it on low overnight. Dream of amazing meat products. Wake up salivating. Go to work. When you get home:
6. Remove the Pork shoulder and skim/strain out the onions.
7. Pour the liquid into a pot. Add some brown sugar. Lots of brown sugar.
8. Reduce the liquid till it coats the back of a spoon and it’s nice and gloopy.
9. Add the pork shoulder back to the crock pot. Coat with the reduce liquid. It should “pull” or shread on it’s own just from turning and smushing the sauce in. I like big-chunk pulled pork, so I usually just mix it with a wooden spoon, but if you want stringier pulled pork, shred it on the counter with a fork before this step.
10. Eat.
If you find you have more pork than sauce, feel free to add some store-bought bbq sauce.
The most important point is that you NEVER turn it to high and that you need > 8 hours of cooking time. If you turn it to high or you give it less time, you’ll either have stringy, dried out pork or tough, not-so-pulled pork.
Sounds good to me! The piece of meat is actually pretty huge. Anything wrong with cutting it down into 4 pieces?
mmmm. Now I want to make pulled pork.
Paris said:Sounds good to me! The piece of meat is actually pretty huge. Anything wrong with cutting it down into 4 pieces?
I wouldn’t think so, but I usually cook it all in one piece.
Also, you’re probably going to have a lot of rendered fat. Depending on how greezy you like your pulled pork, you may want to cool the juice off in the fridge for a bit before cooking it down so you can easily skim the fat off the top.
I cut some meat off to save for another time. So this particular adventure is of the bone-variety. I put in a beer with spices (instead of ginger ale) and had a lot of fun with the seasoning/liquids (focusing on heat with some Tabasco, Frank’s, and chili powder).
As the hours pass, the smell moves further into the house. Around 11 last night, Sammy and I smelled it from the couch. And this morning, I left my room and smelled it from the top of the stairs.
Oof, I don’t think the beer was a very good idea. The point of the soda was that it has a lot of sugar to reduce into a sweet BBQ sauce. If you’re not down with ginger ale, go with cola or root beer or something. Beer gets more bitter as it reduces, not more sweet. You might end up having to toss the liquid and just use regular BBQ sauce.
Yea I needed the back-up BBQ sauce.
But let me tell you, I slide the bone out with such ease after that 24 hour cook. I couldn’t believe it, no effort at all.
24 hours was probably a bit too much time and it may have gotten stringy or dried out. You want between 14-18 hours. That why you set it up to cook right before you go to bed.
I’m surprised you’re able to pull the hunk out when you strain out the onions without it all falling apart!
I’ve made it once and it’s extremely simple. you can cook it 8 hours on low with bbq sauce.
What I’d like to be able to make is the Italian Pulled Pork like Dinic’s. I am not the hugest fan of bbq sauce (odd, because I love ketchup and spicy things). I couldn’t find a great and relatively easy recipe for italian pulled pork…maybe I googled the wrong terms.
You might want to cut it into pieces if it doesn’t fit in the crock pot, but I don’t think you really need to. Low and slow, baby!
Sue, as it would so happen, that’s exactly what we’re having for dinner tonight. It’s a two stage process:
1. Slow-roast some pork loin (in an oven, not a crock pot) after a decent brining and covering with herbs.
2. Let it cool, wrap it, and put it in the fridge.
3. The next day, slice super thin (using my new deli meat slicer, the original inspiration for having it tonight) and simmer slowly in the saved drippings from step 1 and some pork stock (a good use for that bone you pull out from the pork shoulder). If you don’t have pork stock, just some water and seasonings’ll do.
4. Apply simmered pork to sandwich. Add diced onion, sharp provolone, maybe some broccoli rabe.
Second adventure tonight. I have the ginger ale this time. And I’ll be starting it a tad later.
Bone out, this time.
Pics or it didn’t happen!