2010 Cooking Club Week 48: Pulled Pork

Mr. CooL ICE

Made it this week and it was even better. Used the molasses instead of honey and had it at the low setting (I think my Breville 3.5l low = Tesco SC high).

Although it tasted awesome, I was stung for the cost of the shoulder. €24 for a 2.7kg piece. It's amazing, but the previous shoulder I bought (may have been 1.6kg, can't remember) was a pre vacuum packed piece for only €7

ChewChew

My pork is in since 9am. My sister who 'hates' pork walked in a whole ago and loved the smell of it, so so far so good! I also baked a load of tear and share ( thanks to the GIBO) to go with it tonight! Yum yum yum

Sparks

LordChessington wrote: »

I was stung for the cost of the shoulder. €24 for a 2.7kg piece.

What? No, don't pay that much. The whole point is that it's meant to be poor person food! If you can't get shoulder cheaply, use leg (that's all I've been able to source round here easily). It's something this recipe and good chilli share - you don't want expensive meat, you want something with a lot of connective tissue, something that if you just cut a steak from it and fried it fast and hot, would be like trying to eat a meat-flavoured car tyre.

Mr. CooL ICE

Yeah, I misheard him. I had rang around a few places and this guy had it in stock and was able to cut it to size. When he weighed it, I thought he said 2.4, but he must have said 24.

To be honest, I really have a shedload of pulled pork now. Since the 'pulling' ~4 (large) portions have been consumed, around 4-5 are in the fridge and another 4 are frozen. So in perspective, it wasn't as crazy expensive as I first thought.

unkel

That's an expensive butcher! My local butcher would charge about €16 for 2.7 kg of shoulder with the bone in. Still, as you say €2 per generation portion isn't too bad

ChewChew

Thank you sparks for a great recipe.... And hello breakfast!!

Honey-ec

For anyone within handy distance of Courtney Food Service in the KCR Industrial estate, I got my last shoulder of pork there. 2.4kg boned weight - a tenner!

I love that place anyway, but even more so after that

Johnny_Fontane

Lads, I'll do you one better.
2.7kg of bone in shoulder for €6 from Joe's butcher shop on Ballybough road (opp. annesley motors). He's an old school butcher, business been there for 40 years and a great guy.

Made the pulled pork at the weekend and it was a triumph.

Couple of points:
- I made it in a large slow cooker (5.5L - €27 delivered from littlewoods). Therefore the ingredient amounts are not enough to cover the pork (or even close).
-This however made no difference, it was still delicious. It was done in 8 hours comfortably and melted off the bone.
-I used a lot less cider vinegar and bbq to finish it off (once it was pulled), it was still epic.

Thanks to the OP for the recipe

Tony

Yeah I'm gonna use a lot less cider vinegar on the next batch.

Johnny_Fontane wrote: »

-I used a lot less cider vinegar and bbq to finish it off (once it was pulled), it was still epic.

Johnny_Fontane

unkel wrote: »

That's an expensive butcher! My local butcher would charge about €16 for 2.7 kg of shoulder with the bone in. Still, as you say €2 per generation portion isn't too bad

you've also been shafted by your butcher.......

unkel

Johnny_Fontane wrote: »

you've also been shafted by your butcher.......

Your butcher is cheaper, but it would cost me a lot more in petrol to drive to Ballybough than to buy from my local butcher

Johnny_Fontane

unkel wrote: »

Your butcher is cheaper, but it would cost me a lot more in petrol to drive to Ballybough than to buy from my local butcher

true! I see this alot, particularly with Butchers, charging customers way over the odds for certain pieces of meat. Its up to the customers to tell the butcher, you're charging way too much! Difficult to do, but butchers mark up is actually very high, seeing that most of them dont break down their own beef any more.

unkel

In fairness to my butcher, he came back from the fridge with a quarter of a pig on his shoulder and it took him a good few minutes to saw and chop off my shoulder of pork

Tony

unkel wrote: »

In fairness to my butcher, he came back from the fridge with a quarter of a pig on his shoulder and it took him a good few minutes to saw and chop off my shoulder of pork

Yep same with mine

DeVore

OMNOMNOMNOMNOM

(my first attempt. ..)

Johnny_Fontane

I made my own coleslaw with this at the weekend and the coleslaw was excellent and remarkably simple.

Grate some white cabbage
grate some red cabbage
grate an apple
grate a carrot
throw in some salt/pepper and lemon juice
Mix in some mayonnaise.

Done.

Worked well the pulled pork (but doesnt everything?)

FortuneChip

I've done this dish twice now (purchased a 2.5l cooker from Argos for €20), and both times it's been an absolute hit! First time I cooked it on low for 20 hours. We snacked on half of it straight away, and then let the other half cook in sauce for another hour or so.
Went a little (and only a little) heavy on the cayenne, so the meat had an initial kick that was nearly addictive!

Second time, I made it for the family, cooked it on high for 8 hours. Again, it fell apart with no effort, and tasted perfect.

Seriously, super recipe, and near effortless to make.

One question, I was thinking of trying it with beef, maybe brisket. Would you alter any of the ingredients, or cooking times?

Sparks

tl;dr - yes.

I've been looking to do some proper BBQ brisket for a while now (and found a source for the brisket) but the whole parenting thing slows down my pace on these things a lot.

If you just substituted in brisket for pork, it'd cook the same way... but I think the flavours would be all wrong. Too sweet, for a start.

It's an idea for a future CC recipe though

fitzcoff

I bought a slow cooker two weeks ago and made this over the weekend. I bought pork shoulder from the butchers, he only gets them in once a week on a Wednesday and there is an order book for it. I went on Saturday and someone hadn't collected theirs so he gave it to me. I didn't weigh it but it was €8.99.

I brought it home and stripped off the skin/fat and deboned it, only to sit down and read the thread properly to find out I could have left it in.

I made crackling from the skin/fat, husband and eldest scoffed this.

I cooked the meat on high for 7 hours and it was amazing. I am really odd when it comes to meat, I can't bear the taste of fat on my meat, so when I was preparing the shoulder I was saying there is no way I would eat this looking at all the connective tissue/fat etc. but it had just disappeared while cooking.

I used the pork in rolls with coleslaw for dinner, then had it on pizza the following night and had it in wraps for lunch yesterday. There was only 2 of us eating it. I have given a lunchbox portion of it away and there is a load of it still left. Great value for money.

I will def be making this again. Thanks very much op

Sparks

You're welcome fitz, glad it worked out so well for you!

Gauge

You can add my mother to the list of people who bought a slow cooker and made this, after listening to me rave about it over the phone my extended family send their thanks! It's now a weekend staple.

Sparks

Brilliant!

stevenmu

For beef, I used this recipe a while ago and it was fantastic.

I'd never roasted garlic before either, so doing that was a huge plus to the recipe, and it's definitely something I'll be doing again.

howamidifferent

stevenmu wrote: »

For beef, I used this recipe a while ago and it was fantastic.

I'd never roasted garlic before either, so doing that was a huge plus to the recipe, and it's definitely something I'll be doing again.

What piece/part/size/price of beef did you use?

howamidifferent

howamidifferent wrote: »

Ok, I've read this thread several times while drooling over my keyboard.
Finally bought a 3.5L slow cooker. Searched high and low over the past few days and eventually found a pork butcher who had a shoulder of pork. I bought a nice big 2.5KG piece and then raided several aldi/dunnes/lidls to get all the various spices etc. Plan is to do the rub this evening and cook tomorrow night.
I'm starving thinking about this already!

I forgot to upload my pics when I did this...So here they are...

I'm not a fan of "wet" meat so didnt make the BBQ sause but the meat was delicious!

So... I'm looking at getting this going again. But I've never liked the barbeque sauces that I've bought - could anyone recommend a sauce to put into the meat at the end? The missus especially doesn't like a strong bbq taste, which isn't ideal. I'd prefer more a sweet taste to a vinegar taste if at all possible.

Awkward I know!

Dizzyblonde

I use this one from the Hairy Bikers - the original recipe has only a teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce but I increased it to a tablespoon. It's a lovely sauce and has no smoky bbq flavour:

3 tomatoes, chopped (or half a tin of chopped tomatoes)
1 red onion, finely chopped
1 tbsp of worcestershire sauce
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 tsp mustard powder
240 ml ketchup
2 tbsp soy sauce
55g sugar
1 tbsp cornflour mixed with
3-4 tbsp of water
salt & black pepper

Put everything except the cornflour & water into a pot and bring to the boil. Slowly stir in the cornflour mixture until the sauce has thickened.

DeVore

I cheated and used that Reggae Reggae sauce and it was lovely with it....

vibe666

this was my last one (also posted in the slow cooker thread) from the slow cooker that just got polished off last night.

Made a trivet with 5 apples and left it in all day on low, then mash the apples up in the juices and pull the pork, mix through and then drain the excess meat juices and put them with a can of bulmers in a pan with a teaspoon of English mustard, and 6 tablespoons each of honey, rice wine vinegar, honey, tomato ketchup, good oyster sauce, light muscavado sugar and 6 teaspoons of tomato puree and reduce it down to a thick syrup before adding it back to the meat in the slow cooker for 30 more minutes.

i've been playing around with the recipe for a while now (based on my ribs recipe that i've been messing around with for years) and that's the easiest one yet, nice and simple measurements (all 6's) and you only have to remember to keep the tom puree as teaspoons not tablespoons, so it's almost idiot proof!

the hardest part was opening a can of bulmers and NOT drinking it! :pac:

it's sweet and sticky, but if you prefer it less sweet, you can always reduce the amount of sugar and/or honey or just not use as much sauce overall. suck it and see i guess.

FortuneChip

Nice to have time off work to do this!!!






Threw in a few shots of Captain Morgan when it was cooking as well. Also had two/three chilli's in there as they needed to be used. Sweet with spice and ever so nice.

Never get bored of making this!