2010 Cooking Club Week 48: Pulled Pork

I hate that "oh... bother" moment

(and I'll add a tablespoon or two to the sauce as well at the end)

Made another few batches of this during the "season", but haven't made much in the way of major changes to the recipe. I have a larger slow cooker now so the batches are a bit larger, and I've been able to find pork shoulder a lot more readily now that pulled pork is A Thing™ so the meat cut has changed, but the basic process remains the same. Sometimes I'll add a chipotle instead of a jalapeno (I found a shop on my walk home that sells canned chipotles in adobo and canned tomatillos and other fun things). Sometimes I'll add liquid smoke. But mostly it's a stable recipe.

Doh. Sorry sibersha. That can happen if your slow cooker is large and you crank it up as high as it will go; some of them seem to have been designed with the assumption that they'll always be full and can burn things if the liquid evaporates. You need to ensure you always have enough liquid in the cooker; if the cooker is full of meat and there's not a huge amount of room for liquid, that'll do it because the meat will absorb the thermal energy and keep the temperature of the liquid low enough to reduce evaporation (so for small cookers this almost never happens, but with the big ones, if you haven't filled them with meat, bad things can happen).

If you're trying again, just add more liquid. It doesn't have to be a swimming pool, but you need enough to be sure it doesn't run dry. Just add more coke to the cooker (or even water) if it's running low. You can also experiment with lower temperature settings on the slow cooker, but be sure to keep an eye on it; remember, if you think it's ready, grab a piece of meat with the tongs and twist; if it feels like cooked meat, it's not done yet. It should come away with almost no force at all, it should not feel like a steak or a roast.