Pulled Pork

Alright, finally have some time to do this post! It's been a busy week at work, word is starting to spread and we are getting busier and busier. I'm loving all of the free amazing food. Anyway, over the weekend I decided it was time to try making some pulled pork at home. I had never made it before, in fact, I only tasted pulled pork for the first time in my life this past summer. It was redonkulous, so I had to add this to my repertoir. I went to my butcher and got myself a pork shoulder roast which weighed in at 6.3 pounds, pretty damn big if you ask me.

First I did a dry rub (pictured above) with my Creole spice mix and let the pork shoulder sit overnight in the fridge. The following morning I got out the trusty slow cooker. I grabbed 2 yellow onions, sliced them each in half and placed them flat side down in the slow cooker. I then put the pork shoulder on top of the onions, keeping it elevated so that it didn't end up sitting in its own juices. I didn't brown the shoulder in a skillet mostly because it was too massive, but I do recommend browning beforehand in order to get rid of some of the fat and to also give it a little more flavour. Do not, however, get rid of too much fat or you'll end up with dry meat! Moving along, I put the lid on, put it on LOW and let it cook for a long, long time. Depending on how big your cut is, 9-10 hours should be enough. You could always put it on HIGH for 5-6 hours if you don't want to wait so long. Don't worry too much about cooking time and setting, just worry about cooking it until it's fork tender.

Not quite done but getting there

After 10 hours, I turned the cooker off and let the pork cool for a bit and then proceeded to pull it apart, hence the name pulled pork. Pretty easy to do, take two forks and just giver! Or you can use your hands if you like to get your hands dirty. I didn't over-shred the pork because I wanted a meaty texture, not a mushy one. After pulling the entire shoulder apart, I added some barbecue sauce. Use whatever sauce you like for pulled pork, but anything with hickory in the title usually works best. I'm going to eventually get into making my own barbecue sauces from scratch.

Sauce it up!

I mixed it up, slapped some of the pulled pork in a kaiser roll and voila, pulled pork sandwich.. it was so good I had to have another one, and another, and another, until I nearly OD'ed on the stuff and ran out of kaiser rolls and had to resort to using plain bread (pictured above). To quote Jerry in an episode of Seinfeld, "This is so ****ing good!" So yeah, it went pretty well. I'll do it again in the spring with my own sauce. Don't be intimidated to make this at home, it takes a bit of time and effort but it really isn't all that hard to do. Get a high quality cut of meat (in this case, pork shoulder), a decent barbecue sauce, and a dry rub (or make your own) and you're good to go. That's it for now, next week I'm taking a break from meat and doing some stuffed pasta and strawberry cheesecake crèpes!