First of all, apologies for our absence! We've been traveling this weekend and as a result have been relying too heavily on fast food and restaurants. Today, we're back to the grind with a recipe we tried last Sunday: Slow-Roasted Pulled Pork (Cooking Light, December 2009). Thankfully we started this dish around 11am on a day where we had nothing to do, because it took. For. EVER. This recipe requires 1 hour of standing time for the rub, followed by 1 hour of baking, then 3 hours of more baking with periodic basting, followed by an additional 3 and 3/4 hours MORE BAKING.
Blame it on ADD or just poor reading comprehension, but we missed that last 3 and 3/4 hour instruction and what we'd planned for as a late lunch turned into an even later dinner! Let this be a lesson to us all - read your recipes once and check them twice, scanning for and highlighting resting and cooking times.
After 9 hours worth of salivating, we were ready to dig in, but not so fast - the next step, pulling the pork, took another 30 minutes! Even though the meat had roasted for almost a whole day, it still wasn't tender and required a serious upper body workout to achieve "pulled pork" status.
Apart from doing some simple math, we might also have benefited from checking the comments section online. An astute commenter mentioned that she's made this recipe in her crockpot with excellent results. The next day, the enterprising Mr. Yuppie threw the leftover meat into a crockpot with a bit of water and cooked it down some more. Wouldn't you know, it was 5 times more juicy and delicious than the original finished product?
The sauce is easy but delicious, and we'd recommend making a double or triple batch if you like your pulled pork saucy. Overall, this dish was seriously underwhelming, and we most likely will try another pulled pork recipe before coming back to this one.
Can your mad cooking skills put ours to shame? Let us know if you've had success with this recipe in the comments section!
Hey! "First time poster" here. I got a Crock pot last Christmas, and tried this recipe.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.food.com/recipe/crock-pot-old-south-pulled-pork-on-a-bun-76273
Couple of things: from your photo, it doesn't look like you used pork shoulder or butt. That's what I was told was the best cut to use. And the three times I've made the recipe it's turned out great. Anytime you fire up the skillet with onions and garlic, the house smells great for the rest of the day. :-)
I've played each time with the amount of liquid smoke and brown sugar. I used the slow cooker on 6 hours on 'high' once, but the longer 9+ hours 'slow' time turned out much better. It does literally fall apart, not much "pulling" needed.
Get up early, get it all prepped- no rub time needed in this one. Come home and you'll drool, it smells so good.
It definitely was a pork shoulder, or at least that's how it was labeled by our grocer. We did trim some of the fat from the outsides, but it was very nicely marbled. We're relatively sure that it was the cooking method that did us in.
ReplyDeleteWe've bookmarked your recipe and are hoping to try it over the holiday weekend. Thanks so much for the suggestion, and we'll let you know how it goes!