Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Vinegar Pulled Pork

I'm going to adapt this for oven cooking and less servings. I'll put a 3-4 lb pork butt in a covered casserole in the oven at 300 deg. for 4 or more hours.

Serves 10

Ingredients
  • Pork butt or untrimmed end-cut pork shoulder roast, 7 to 9 pounds
  • Olive oil
  • Salt
  • Freshly ground pepper
  • Hickory wood chips, soaked in water for 30 minutes
  • Vinegar Sauce (recipe below)
  • Carolina Coleslaw (recipe below)
  • 8 plain white hamburger buns if you want to sandwich it
1 .Build a charcoal or gas grill for indirect cooking.
2 .Do not trim any excess fat off the meat; this fat will naturally baste the meat and keep it moist during the long cooking time. Brush pork with a thin coating of olive oil. Season with salt and pepper. Set aside on a clean tray until ready to cook.
3. Before placing the meat on the grill, add the soaked wood chips. Place the chips directly on gray-ashed briquettes or in the smoking box of your gas grill. If you are using a charcoal grill, you will need to add charcoal every hour to maintain the heat.
4. Place the pork in the center of the cooking grate, fat-side up, over indirect low heat. Cover and cook slowly for 4 to 5 hours at 325°F to 350°F, or until an instant-read thermometer inserted into the middle of the pork registers 190°F to 200°F. The meat should be very tender and falling apart. If there is a bone in the meat, it should come out smooth and clean with no meat clinging to it.
5. Let the meat rest for 20 minutes or until cool enough to handle. Using rubber kitchen gloves, pull the meat from the skin, bones, and fat. Set aside the crispy bits (fat) that have been rendered and look almost burned. Working quickly, shred the chunks of meat with 2 forks and "pulling" the meat into small pieces from the butt. Alternately, you can chop the meat with a cleaver. Chop the reserved crispy bits and mix into the pulled pork. While the meat is still warm, mix with enough Vinegar Sauce to moisten and season the meat (about 3/4 cup).
6. Serve hot, sandwich-style on a hamburger bun and top with coleslaw. Serve more sauce on the side if desired.


Vinegar Sauce

Makes about 3 cups

Ingredients
  • 2 cups apple cider vinegar
  • 1/2 cup tomato paste
  • 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
  • 2 tablespoons sugar
  • 1 tablespoon salt
  • 1 tablespoon ground white pepper
  • 1/2 to 1 tablespoon red pepper flakes
  • 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Mix all ingredients together in a large nonreactive bowl and let sit at least 10 minutes or almost indefinitely, covered in the refrigerator.

OR even simpler just try:
white vinegar, cider vinegar, salt, pepper and tabasco


Carolina Coleslaw


Makes about 3 cups

Ingredients
  • 1 recipe Vinegar Sauce
  • 1 medium head green cabbage, chopped

Toss the sauce and cabbage together until well mixed and not quite wet. You may have sauce left-over. Refrigerate. Let sit for at least 2 hours or overnight before serving.

1 comment:

  1. Even though I posted this, I wasn't a huge fan. The original dish calls for smoked pork, maybe thats why. But really I just felt it was too vinegary, so maybe the same thing but less vinegar!

    ReplyDelete

If I do not respond to your comment right away, it is only because I am busy pulling out buckthorn, creeping charlie, and garlic mustard...