Yummmmm Pulled Pork
So here’s the dish. (Inspiration for this recipe yanked liberally and with thanks from Ming Tsai’s excellent website.)
Pulled Pork, sloppy and juicy and oh so tasty.
Necessary Equipment
5 Quart Cast Iron Dutch Oven (You probably could duplicate most of the results with a slow cooker, but I do not have one.) I happen to LOVE this one — and it is always a reasonable price at Amazon. Lodge Logic 5-Quart Double Dutch Oven and Casserole with Skillet Cover
Heavy tongs. No really.
Ingredients
- Pork – Half Shoulder (BONE IN and with skin!)
- 1 Cup Sugar (I prefer “Sugar in the Raw”)
- 10 Stalks of Scallion, washed and chopped into 2 inch lengths.
- 2 Whole Garlic Bulbs, washed and peeled.
- 2 Green Chinese Chilies, washed, halved and seeds removed, then chopped.
- 3 Inches (roughly) of Ginger, wash, peel, cut into large chunks.
- 1 Orange, peeled then cut roughly into six-eight slices.
- Salt, Paprika, Thyme, Peppercorns (Rough seasoning, a teaspoon of each will do just fine.)
- 2 Cups Water
- 1 Cup Soy Sauce
- 1 Cup Red Wine
- 0.5 Cup Balsamic Vinegar
- 0.5 Cup Whiskey
Okay, this sounds like work but it really isn’t that bad.
- Heat up your dutch oven, add a little bit of oil.
- Wash your pork shoulder in cold water, then sear it on all sides in your dutch oven. For the love of your hands, please use your tongs and wear gloves if you have them. Don’t burn the living daylights out of yourself!
- Pull the shoulder out and set it aside (if you have the dutch oven I have, you can set it right in the cover on your oven!
- Add your “wet” ingredients to the pot and let it come to a simmer. I like to do my prep of items like the orange, peppers, scallions and such while the liquids are coming to a simmer. Toss your other ingredients in as you are preparing.
- When all items have come to a nice simmer, push the floating items to the side and put your pork shoulder in, SKIN SIDE UP. IT should come up to about the skin without submerging completely.
- Cover and put in preheated oven at 300 degrees. Cook as such for 4-6 hours.
- Check on your shoulder. When the bone simply lifts out with absolutely no effort, you’re ready for stage two.
- Remove all meat, then remove the bone. Set aside the bone if you wish for later prep.
- Strain the sauce of all solids, then pour back into dutch oven or a slow cooking device of your choice.
Okay. So here’s the thing, you COULD serve it as is. You could take the meat, chunk it out or pull it apart, and cut up the skin for serving to the brave and the bold. You COULD just take the strained sauce and reduce it a bit, and use it for the pork. But what is the fun in that? So here’s stage two, which is quite easy.
- Take your sauce, pour it into a nice slow cooker. (I use a Thermos cooker myself.) If you don’t have a slow cooker of any sort, you COULD go right back into the dutch oven!
- Making sure you’ve removed all bone from the meat, chunk the meat if necessary to fit in your slow cooker. Drop the results back in the sauce. Leave the skin on, or if you’re scared you COULD just remove the skin. But again, what would the fun be then?
- Once you have just the sauce (strained!) and the meat, cook this AGAIN for as long as you can. My latest batch cooked for an additional 15 hours before serving. You can choose to pull the pork apart with two forks, or serve it chinese style as big chunks of pork. Serve with Rice, on bread, but whatever you do, serve it with a generous pouring of the sauce! The end result is a very tender pork with a sauce that is glorious with just rice or any bread.
- You can go further. Take the strained out “stuff” from the sauce, which should be a very potent and fragrant mash with big chunks of ginger and whole peppercorns just sitting in there. I took this mixture and blended it down to a fine mash, then mixed it with broth made from the bone. This yields a extremely potent sauce that I’m saving, but I imagine COULD be served with some of the meat if you were daring enough. I have a jar of this in my fridge at the moment to experiment with.
Oh, by the way, I’ve been informed that the sauce, which you will have plenty of, is also great for serving up some other styles of dish. Take peeled, softboiled eggs and simmer in the sauce for about an hour. The eggs will absorb all of the sauce, yum.
Enjoy!
