2010 Cooking Club Week 48: Pulled Pork

Sparks

Oooo, that could be interesting...

BaZmO*

Dizzyblonde wrote: »

Yes - it's brilliant for pulled pork, very tender and very easy to pull. I'm cooking 2 for a birthday party this weekend, cost me €20 for almost 5kg.

Yeah it's great. The OH is Lithuanian and they use it all the time for making Shisleeka (not the right spelling). You cut it into chunks and marinate it in spices then skewer it and BBQ it. Unbelievablely tasty.

Sulla Felix

BaZmO* wrote: »

Yeah it's great. The OH is Lithuanian and they use it all the time for making Shisleeka (not the right spelling). You cut it into chunks and marinate it in spices then skewer it and BBQ it. Unbelievablely tasty.

Yeah, in the interests of science, we're going to need that recipe. :pac:

Dizzyblonde

Shashlik? I've had that years ago on holiday, it's really good.

BaZmO*

Dizzyblonde wrote: »

Shashlik? I've had that years ago on holiday, it's really good.

Yeah. I've just checked and it's spelled Šašlykai. It's originally an Armenian dish and I had it in an Armenian restaurant while I was in Lithuania on holidays, it was beautiful but the version her family makes is just as nice. We have it at most family get togethers....regardless of the weather! Her Dad is an absolute master of the BBQ!

gg2

I couldn't get black strap molasses just plain old molasses.... Will it do?

Sparks

If it doesn't look like honey, it's grand. But the darker you can get it, the better it tastes.

Sikpupi

Juts an update ... went into local butcher and saw in their display shelves a shrink-wrapped Pork Shoulder for €10.99. it was 2.8kg - a bit too much for my needs! And they advised that this was the only size they come in!

I also saw shrink-wrapped Pork Neck.... at €5.49 a pack.. probably around 1kg in weight.

So.. at last I found a source for my Pork. I suppose I could freeze the un-used Shoulder. So on my shopping list for next week

Neyite

This was amazing. My first slowcooker dish.

Though it was lovely on a bap, it really was amazing in a wrap with grated cheddar.

dipdip

sparks what's the reasoning behind the cooking liquid you use? It needs to be discarded afterwards which means it doesn't taste good (I know from cooking it myself that it doesn't smell good, either). A good cooking liquid will make a nice sauce/gravy once reduced.

When I make pulled pork I use a rub (in fact I have used your rub recipe and it is very nice indeed) and then simply cook the rubbed pork in a can of Coke in the slow cooker.

Then, for the sauce, I just thin out some bbq sauce from a bottle with some of the cooking liquid. Toss together and eat.

It simplifies things somewhat and creates an absolutely delicious dish.

Sparks

Well, first you need some sort of liquid because it's a braise rather than a roast; so there has to be *something*. I'm guessing you know that already though, because anyone who makes the dish you're describing would have to

The coke gives water, sugar and acid to the liquid, and yes, if that was all you put in there, it'd still taste pretty good. The onions, the garlic and the chilli give extra flavour, as does the rub and the herbs. The nam pla and the worcestershire are there to increase the umami (or whatever word you want to use to descibe that), and the molasses is more sugar and flavour.

Could you take the liquid, strain it out, and boil it down and make a sauce? Actually, yeah, you could. I don't myself because it's a lot easier to just chuck it and use a bottled sauce, and I think that much sugar and nam pla and all of the other flavours might make it awkward to adjust the taste to get it to where you want it. I like my pulled pork to be savoury but my sauce to be sweet; I find it hard to tweak the sauce for that if I make it with the cooking liquid.

Also, when I wrote that recipe, nobody in Ireland seemed to have heard of pulled pork and I figured the simpler the recipe the better, especially because we were so used to the taste of the cook-it-till-it's-shoe-leather pork recipe that we wouldn't know if we'd screwed it up or not from the taste.

These days, you can find it on the shelves in Aldi as a ready meal (which I'm not sure is a step forward) and it's a fairly popular menu item around dublin in restaurants and sandwich shops (which definitely is a step forward), so maybe a more advanced recipe wouldn't be out of place today!

dipdip

I really appreciate the detailed reply.

I'm not sure that the braising liquid would be good reduced down actually. It doesn't taste great.

Having cooked pulled pork your way and several other ways (including the traditional route with dry cooking in a bbq pit) I couldn't taste anything better with the complex array of ingredients you've specified for the braising liquid. In fact I found the liquid bitter and prefer just cola to save time and wastage. And it tastes brighter (imo) too.

Cheers though Sparks.

Sparks

The bitterness might be from the vinegar I suppose; but I can definitely taste the garlic, the chilli and the worcestershire in the pork before I sauce it. The rest, I don't taste directly and individually, but I can taste when they're not there and I prefer them there, if that makes any sense. The nam pla I never taste directly, but wouldn't expect to, it's just there to make the pork taste more porky. Yeah, that's not a word. I don't have a better word to use though - without it, the taste of the pork isn't quite as porky as with it. And I'm definitely not a supertaster, if anything I have less than the average sense of taste

If you just use the coke - yeah, it'll taste pretty good, it's still pulled pork. I'd *really* miss the chilli and the garlic though.

dipdip

Well the vinegar would be sour rather than bitter - which is nice contrasted with the traditional sweet. It's the molasses I reckon that leaves the bitter flavour in the sauce as it has pretty much no sucrose in it.

Horses for courses and all that.

Sparks

Could be; but I do love that molasses flavour on the pork

stevenmu

The basic idea of reducing down the cooking liquid to make a sauce is sound enough. I guess the key really would be to change the liquid slightly to make something that would reduce down to the sauce you want.

I think I mentioned it here before, but I did a version before where I used a teriyaki recipe I spotted here. IIRC the recipe was something simple like 1/3 cup of apple juice, 1/3 cup of light soy sauce, a tsp or two of ground ginger and maybe a tblsp or two of brown sugar. I cooked the pork in it as normal, then pulled it and just put it back in the slow cooker with the lid off for an hour or two and it reduced down nicely and made a really really nice teriyaki pulled pork.

edit: credit goes to OldBean for the teriyaki recipe here.

yabadabado

http://www.argos.ie/static/Product/partNumber/1837887/c_1/1|category_root|Kitchen+and+laundry|14418476/c_2/3|19780844|Small+kitchen+appliances|14418587/c_3/4|cat_14418587|Slow+cookers+and+ovens|14418592.htm

Saw this today when I was looking to buy a slow cooker.Anyone use this one ,would ye recommend it ?

Sulla Felix

yabadabado wrote: »

http://www.argos.ie/static/Product/partNumber/1837887/c_1/1|category_root|Kitchen+and+laundry|14418476/c_2/3|19780844|Small+kitchen+appliances|14418587/c_3/4|cat_14418587|Slow+cookers+and+ovens|14418592.htm

Saw this today when I was looking to buy a slow cooker.Anyone use this one ,would ye recommend it ?

6L is massive. I have the same one as in the OP and managed to squeeze a 2kg piece into it (well, slightly less, 2kg bought and then trimmed).
How much meat were you planning on?

yabadabado

Sulla Felix wrote: »

6L is massive. I have the same one as in the OP and managed to squeeze a 2kg piece into it (well, slightly less, 2kg bought and then trimmed).
How much meat were you planning on?

I was actually looking at 3.5L one but saw that one and it seemed very good value.Probably too big unless it was going to be used for large quantities.

Sulla Felix

yabadabado wrote: »

I was actually looking at 3.5L one but saw that one and it seemed very good value.Probably too big unless it was going to be used for large quantities.

Well, you can probably still do the smaller cuts of meat in it, but you might need more liquid to be able to cover it. Bigger surface area so might have to top it up more than otherwise too.

Kind of want one now though, just to see how much pulled pork I can make in one go. :pac:

Sparks

6L is *huge*. As in, I'm-cooking-xmas-pulled-pork-for-30-people-in-one-batch huge. Morphy Richards are a decent enough brand, but for slow cookers that's not a huge concern, they're so cheap to make.
But honestly, anything past the 3 to 3.5L range is probably waaay too big for normal real-life use.

Moody_mona

Just on the cooking juices, I have used some to thin out my bbq sauce, not so it's running, but just so the mix becomes more "sloppy" (I can't think of a nice word to describe this!) Not much, just spoonful by spoonful, but it does seem like a waste to chuck it all!

RobertFoster

I've the 6L Morphy Richards; cooked pulled pork in it twice and it came out lovely. The liquid doesn't cover the joint, but I read (on this thread I think), that that doesn't matter.

unkel

Sparks wrote: »

But honestly, anything past the 3 to 3.5L range is probably waaay too big for normal real-life use.

Depends on what you call normal real-life use!

I cook a stew in our 6.5l one for the 5 of us + maybe one or two family members and then have enough to freeze for another meal for us

1 time cooking, 2 times eating. Pretty handy & efficient that

PigeonPie

unkel wrote: »

Depends on what you call normal real-life use!

I cook a stew in our 6.5l one for the 5 of us + maybe one or two family members and then have enough to freeze for another meal for us

1 time cooking, 2 times eating. Pretty handy & efficient that

Same here! I have the large one (6 or 6.5L) and I cook stews etc in it all the time for family of 5. And I either freeze leftovers (if there are any - maybe we're a fierce hungry bunch ) or have it for lunch the next day.

Think I got it in Argos on special offer for around 20 quid.

Cooked the pulled pork in it a few times and turned out fab.

Sparks

Ah, well if you have an entire scout troop to cook for...

hdowney

I have like a 6l one and cook for two. Mind you we are BIG eaters and keep leftovers. Also I am doing this recipe for my next Pot Luck group as my dish to pass so...

allandanyways

Going to make this again this weekend - do you think Liquid Smoke would be a good addition to the cooking liquid? I saw it in the Fresh at Grand Canal Dock and it's only €3.39!

vibe666

Part of the usefulness of the 6L one for me is cooking in bulk. The more you make in one go, the less overall cooking work is involved in making multiple meals.

Sparks

allandanyways wrote: »

Going to make this again this weekend - do you think Liquid Smoke would be a good addition to the cooking liquid? I saw it in the Fresh at Grand Canal Dock and it's only €3.39!

Yes, definitely, I've used it before for that and it's a very nice addition indeed. I'd add it in right at the end, or even into the sauce though, it might be that I did something wrong, but it didn't seem to keep the flavour as much if I put it in right at the start.