BBQ Pulled Pork

I’ve been cooking often in 2009, but this year has been SO busy I can’t find the time to write and post recipes. Here is one from December 08. Jim was staying in Austin to spend Christmas with his mom and I went to Houston to visit my family this holiday season. On one of my days off I decided to make a slow cooker meal that I knew Jim would enjoy eating off of while I’m out of town. I made a VERY successful Hungarian Pot Roast recently and decided to use my slow cooker again and create BBQ Pulled Pork. I’ve made pulled pork before with much success but it had a Mexican flair with caramelized onions and red wine au jus served with tomatillo salsa on flour tortillas. Man, that was a good meal and I should make that again soon, but I’m not good about repeating recipes…as you can tell by my blog. I purchased a little over a pound of pork roast and used the BBQ sauce recipe from when I made BBQ Ribs as my base but made a few slight changes.

Here is the BBQ Sauce Recipe and my changes are in parentheses:
7 oz tomato puree/sauce/ketchup
1 cup finely chopped yellow onions
1/2 cup molasses
1/2 cup red wine vinegar (I’m using half cup of dry sherry)
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons spicy whole-grain mustard
2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
4 cloves minced garlic
1 tablespoon jalapeno peppers (Instead, I’m using 3 chipotle peppers in adobe sauce)
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon hot pepper sauce (leaving out)
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper (adding 1 teaspoon of black peppercorns!)
1/2 teaspoon cayenne (leaving out)
1 tablespoon of finely chopped and peeled fresh ginger (leaving out)
2 T butter


Season pork roast with salt, pepper, onion powder and garlic powder (SPOG as my mom calls it).

Add a little bit of olive oil to a sauté pan and sear the pork on all sides until browned all over. Then place your seared pork in the slow cooker.

In case you didn't know what hipotle peppers in adobo sauce was - here is a picture. Found on the mexican food aisle of most grocery stores.

In the same sauté pan, melt 2 T butter and throw in your chopped onion and cook until translucent about 4 minutes and then add the chopped garlic for one minute. Let the garlic become fragrant, but not browned. Add the chipotle peppers next, then all the rest of the sauce ingredients: dry sherry, tomato sauce, molasses, lemon juice, mustard, brown sugar, Worcestershire, salt and black peppercorns.

Heat through and NOW… drum roll please…

I’m using MY NEW KithchenAid Immersion Blender to easily puree the sauce on the oven.

I love this thing!!!

Next I pour the sauce into the slow cooker over the seared pork. Set to high and let it cook for the day.

Cook until the pork is fork tender and times will vary based on how big your meat is. The pork roast I purchased was just over a pound and after four hours the meat was FORK TENDER!

Move to a plate and salivate.

Use two forks and shred away.

I like BBQ pulled pork piled onto some wheat bread.

I even spoon a little more of the BBQ Sauce on toop before I close my sandwich up. Add some pickles too. Pork is not that expensive. For less than $10 you could feed 8 people!

The Other White Meat

I first got the Pulled Pork craving after reading this post on Pioneer Woman. I started an internet search that led me to several variations and techniques. I used a couple yummy recipe ideas and adapted all these to my own taste. See originals here:

Serious Eats.com

We Are Never Full.com

I learned that Pork Shoulder is the same as Pork Butt or also can be called Boston blade roast or Boston- style butt. Some recipes call this Pernil. All these make me laugh. What shocked me most was how CHEAP pork shoulder/butt is. At my Randall’s it was just over $1 a pound. Wow! I found some good info at The Other White Meat.

For the “mojo,” put all this into your cuisinart and blend well:
1 tsp dried oregano
2 tsp cumin
2 tsp chili powder
1/4 cup brown sugar
4 garlic cloves
5 tsp salt
5 tsp ground pepper
4 Tbsp white wine vinegar
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 onion
1 bunch cilantro
1 ½ cups OJ

1. After you wash your pork in cold water, take your pork shoulder and cut slits (1/2 inch long by 1/2 inch deep) all around the pork. This will allow the marinade to get into the meat.

2. Place the pork into a large zip top bag and pour the mojo into it, then massage the mojo into the pork. Allow it to marinate overnight or at least 6 hours in the fridge, but the longer you let it marinade the better it will taste.

3. Take the pork out of the fridge for a half hour before placing it in the oven.

4. Place in roasting pan or dutch oven and add a couple cups of water (I added almost two cups), season water well too. Cover and roast pork at 300 degrees for several hours, turning once every hour and spooning some of the liquid drippings over the meat. (I read somewhere that cooking time is about an hour per pound)

I cooked for about four hours and the meat was so tender it broke in half as I was pulling it out of the dutch oven.
5. Allow the pork to rest 15-20 minutes before slicing. Using two forks, shred away!

I'm proud of this pyramid of pork I have here. In case you were wondering, the picture below is the bone from the pork shoulder/pork butt...just in case you were wondering.

This is what my dutch oven looked like when I pulled the pork out. I couldn't let all the drippings go to waste, so I put this on the stove and boiled until there was about an inch of liquid left. Then I poured 1/2 glass of merlot into the boiling liquid and stirred it up from the bottom. I let this reduce a little more until I had about a cup of thick sauce.

To go along with my pulled pork tacos I sliced up an onion and tossed over high heat with a little olive oil until they were caramel in color.

Here is my assembly line. Flour tortillas, my homemade tomatillo salsa, pulled pork, wine au jus, caramelized onions - oh my! These were SO good. Not pictured is the sour cream.

My plan is to make pork verde enchiladas with the left overs. I love re-purposing meals!