Pulled Pork - Try #1

Pulled pork has been something I have wanted to make since... maybe since the time I went to a pulled pork specialty restaurant at a business trip in Charlotte. Man do North Carolina know their pulled pork! It was ridiculously tasty and flavourful, but fluffy light at the same time!

So I finally took the opportunity to try it the weekend before Father's Day, hosting for my extended family (my brother's family has to leave for Hong Kong, so the official weekend is a no-go.) On Saturday, I was looking for pork -- googling tells me I need the cut of boston pork butt (which is apparently the upper shoulder), but after running through about half a dozen grocery stores, all I can find was two picnic pork shoulder (which is the lower part of the same shoulder) of about 4.5lbs each (note: the Chinese equivalent cut is actually 不見天 -- I figured that out at No Frills), and that's what I got. The pork gets the brine treatment overnight in two large ziplock bags.

Brine solution:

• 2 litre cold water
• 1 cup sea salt
• 1/2 cup brown/slab sugar
• 1.5 tablespoon liquid smoke
• 2 bay leaves

Onto Sunday morning. Time to pat dry pork from brine. Because I want to apply liquid smoke, I have to rub this mixture of 1/4 cup yellow mustard and 2 teaspoon liquid smoke into pork before applying the dry rub. The wetness of the wet rub does make applying the dry rub a little tricky. Nonetheless, here's the dry rub I did:

• 1 tbsp cumin
• 1 tbsp garlic powder
• 1 tbsp onion powder
• 1 tbsp ground pepper
• 1 tbsp paprika
• 1 tbsp brown sugar
• 1 tbsp salt

Pork goes into charcoal grill for 2 hours. Charcoal is put at one side, lit up. Then place cherry branches, that have been soaked in water for 30min (and then dried), on top of charcoal to get the smoke. The cherry branch treatment is done twice in that span. The pork shoulder is put on other side of oven (to avoid direct heat) fat side up. After 2 hours, it goes into oven, fat side up with aluminum foil wrapped on top of the roaster, for the rest of the afternoon until 190F. It turns out, that I can only get the pork to 177F after 4 1/2 hours, but I have to take it out as my extended family has arrived by 6:30pm, and I need the pork to rest for at least 30 minutes (ideally an hour).

At the mean time, gotta prepare the sauce. I followed one of the recipes below:

• 1 onion chopped
• 2 garlic chopped

Standard procedure here -- onion and garlic simmer on medium heat with olive oil for 5 minutes. Then add:

• 1 cup ketchup
• 2 tbl yellow mustard
• 2 tbl brown sugar
• 2 tbl apple cider vinegar
• 1 tsp paprika

and cook for, say, an hour on low heat. As I took my pork out of the oven, because the aluminum foil was previously unsealed by accident, the roast was drier than expected and wasn't much jus left at the bottom of the roaster. I did salvage whatever jus is remaining and added some to the sauce.

Oh, of course there's the coleslaw. I bought two cabbage heads (one regular, one purple) which is apparently too much. So I only used half and half of them. Chop them up and added about 3 carrot sticks grated and a bit of celeries. Mix them up with a standard coleslaw dressing:

• 1 cup mayo (I used miracle whip in its absence, and it was a mistake... the slaw tasted too fat)
• 2 tbsp. apple cider vinegar
• 2 tsp grainy mustard
• salt and pepper

The Results




The pork is pulled by forks and hands, and into plain burger buns with onions and sauce. Because the pork wasn't cooked to the 180-200F range, the meat didn't quite break down as much, and so didn't have that fall-apart tenderness of pulled pork. It was also a bit dry because of the aluminum foil leak, and also because I couldn't get the pork stay completely fat side up. And it was a little bit on the salty side.

But it does taste like pulled pork, with all the smokiness of the real wood as well as the liquid smoke coming out well. The lifesaver turns out to be the sauce, really disguising the dryness of the pork. At the end of the day, my extended family were quite impressed with and enjoyed it quite well. Particularly my dad gave a big thumbs-up. Not bad for a first-time at all.


Apparently Alton Brown did a Good Eats episode on the technique of smoking using hot plate + cardbox, and another episode on pulled pork smoked by self-made smoker with hot plate + pottery! Maybe next time...

References:
http://pulledporkrecipe.org/cuban-pulled-pork-recipe
http://bbq.about.com/od/rubrecipes/r/bln0224a.htm
http://www.kevinandamanda.com/recipes/dinner/perfect-pulled-pork-slow-roasted-seasoned-savory.html
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/pulled-pork-recipe/index.html
http://thebittenword.typepad.com/thebittenword/2010/01/indoor-pulled-pork-and-other-superbowl-food-ideas.html
http://communities.canada.com/vancouversun/blogs/greenman/archive/2010/02/05/smokey-pulled-pork-from-your-oven.aspx
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ka2kpzTAL8
http://www.easysaladrecipes.com/creamycoleslawrecipe.html