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!
