Making Pulled Pork

  

A friend who shares original poems with me wrote about a pork butt, in free verse, which prompted me to ask him if he makes pulled pork.  He said no.

Pork butts and pulled pork go together like peas and carrots, and pulled pork is deceptively easy to make.  I do it all the time for people who need meals delivered, for big get-togethers, or just for my wife and me. It freezes nicely, keeps well, and people like it.  I feel better when I have some in the house.

I told my poet friend I could send him my pulled pork recipe if he’d like.  He responded with enthusiasm.  And when I still hadn’t sent it days later, he reminded me.  Sometimes you shoot off your mouth without thinking. Truth is, I don’t have a pulled pork recipe. I just make it. Could be the pulled pork is different every time, but the final product doesn’t seem to be.  

I tend to think everything is simple but it’s not.  After much thought I decided rather than writing down a list of ingredients in made-up amounts, followed by a step-by-step process, the kind of recipe your mom wrote on an index card and kept in a box, I should write it as a blog. I apologize in advance to my friend the poet. There’s background to consider. And nuance.  Everybody likes a little nuance, don’t they?

For starters, pork butts aren’t butts at all. They are cut from the shoulder of a pig.  The actual butt, or hindquarters of a pig, are cured and made into hams.  On a side note, if you see a small cut of pork called a picnic ham being sold in your favorite store know that it is a chunk of brined and cured pork shoulder extending possibly to the front leg.  Meat cuts are named with marketing in mind.  The reality is that when you buy a 7-9 pound pork butt, you’re buying a pig shoulder.

You’ll know that for certain after you bake it at a low temp overnight when it is fall off the bone tender, and you see a chunk of smooth bone poking up from the fat end of the butt.  That bone is the pig’s shoulder blade.  Pull it.  It comes out easy.  But I’m ahead of myself, talking about a fully cooked butt.  Let’s start at the beginning, with the pot.

I was once driving through Tennessee on a road trip and found a factory second kind of place selling imperfect Lodge cast iron cookware.  I may have been close to South Pittsburgh, Tennessee where Lodge cookware is made.  Doesn’t matter.  I bought a Lodge 5-quart cast iron Dutch oven.  If it was flawed, I couldn’t tell.  I’m glad I bought it because I use it a lot.  It’s my "go to" pot for baking a whole chicken, and I don’t make pulled pork in anything else. 

I don’t want to get all snobby here.  Any oven-safe cookware will probably do, I just think cast iron works best.  You could probably cook pulled pork in the big roaster made of thin steel you cook a turkey in.  You know the one with a speckled blue finish?  It’s not as thick or heavy.  My experience with cast iron has been good but in the end, anything big enough with a good lid will do.

I am challenged to find pork butts small enough for my 5-quart pot.  Butts are amazingly uniform in weight.  Seems like they’re all about 9 pounds.  A nine-pound butt threatens to take up all the room needed for the liquid that cooks out of the butt and collects in my pot.  If you’re cooking a big butt, and it is crammed with pork butt and ingredients, put a cookie sheet under it to be safe.  You might avoid an all-out emergency involving smoke alarms and opening all the doors and windows downstairs.  You get the idea.  Now on to the butt itself.

I trim some but not all the fat off the butt. If you’re queasy about fat, this may not be the dish for you.  One side of the pork butt is covered with a solid sheet of white fat.  I remove the thickest parts of that fat blanket.  I suppose you could take all the outside fat off because there’s lots more fat running throughout the pork butt you can’t get to.  I know that’s vague but use your own judgement. 

After trimming some fat, I let my butt sit on the counter to warm up and dry off before I start getting it ready for the oven.  First, I coat the butt with olive oil, then salt it well with kosher salt.  I’m sorry, I have no idea how much salt I use.  Maybe a big handful or more.  Be generous, a pork butt is a big chunk of meat.  You’re just salting the outside of it.  I use a lot of salt and have never been told my pulled pork was too salty.

If you need to prep your pork butt a long while before cooking it, like prep in the morning before cooking it at night, you can put the salted pork uncovered on a plate in the fridge and take it out later to warm up.  It’ll dry out well that way.  You need your butt dry when you put on the rub. 

I wish I could tell you more about the rub.  It’s the most vague part of this story.  But then again, why should I assume I know the kind and amount of spices you like?  The goal is to have enough powdered spice to cover the whole outside surface of a dry salted pork butt.  The proportions?  The ingredients?  All I can do is tell you what I do. And so far, I’ve never screwed this up.

I go to the cupboard and get the kind of bowl I eat dry cereal or oatmeal from.  You have a stack of those somewhere. I want to end up with just a little more than half the dry spice in the bowl as compared to a portion of Cheerios I would eat for breakfast.  I don’t measure the amounts.  Here’s what I can tell you though. 

The biggest part of my spice mix is garlic powder.  I start with that.  Not garlic salt, mind you, the powder.  On top of that, I put powdered red pepper of some kind.  I like using powdered Ancho chili mixed with a smaller amount of cayenne.  I add about the same amount of powdered black pepper.  I also put in some Chipotle powder. 

When my granddaughter June was a baby, I was making pulled pork at an Air B&B in Wicker Park in Chicago.  From a fully stocked spice drawer in someone else’s kitchen, I discovered two spices called Harissa and Zaatar.  They are Middle Eastern spice blends. Think of them as you would the chili powder Americans put into Super Bowl chili.  Zaatar has sumac in it which makes it distinctive.  I think it adds a lot to the pulled pork.  I use plenty of both in my spice bowl.

So, with your half a cereal bowl of spices, thrown together by instinct, you’re ready to apply the rub.  Stir the dried spices well.  Put your butt on a big cutting board and rub every inch of it with the spice mixture.  Hold the butt on its side and blot the edges with the spices that fell off.  Plop it in your cooking pot.  Then scrape together the spices strewn about on the cutting board and counter and throw them in there too.

Don’t skip the vegetables.  I cut two or three poblano peppers in half, take out the seeds and stems, and put those in the space between the pork and the side of the pot.  You can use any kind of peppers you like, although bell peppers don’t add much.  Add a serrano or two if you’re brave.   

I cut two or three yellow onions in half and do the same thing, along with some garlic cloves.  I’ve done carrots too, but they’re not as important as fresh peppers and onions.  There is only room for so many vegetables.  The veggies cook up so soft that when you mash the contents of your pot, the pork and the veggies meld together.  The veggies disappear but their flavor and texture are part of the dish.

Here's the best part.  After you’ve done all that, simply put the lid on the pot and put your butt into a preheated 225 oven (on a cookie sheet to be safe) shut the door, and don’t open it again for 12 hours.  I usually start mine in the evening.  If I get it in the oven at 7:00 p.m. I wake up to the smell of it at 7:00 a.m. and it’s ready for the last steps.  I’m usually up anyway. But if you happen to take it out a little early or let it go a bit longer don’t worry about it. 

After taking it from the oven I leave the Dutch oven on top of the stove with the lid on and have a cup of coffee. Then I take the lid off and have another one.  With two big spoons, one on each side, I then transfer the whole butt from the pot to a bigger shallow pan.   I scoop the veggies out with a slotted spoon and put them in the pan with the pork. 

To finish off this dish I switch to two utensils; a big fork and a simple potato masher.  Pull that shoulder blade out of the butt and push the potato masher straight down into the middle of the whole thing.  It will probably moosh right through the meat and touch the bottom of the pan.  Taste it.  It’s beautifully soft slow-cooked spicy pork. 

Keep mashing.  Your vegetables will disappear into the pork.  If you have some leaner butt chunks you may need to separate the grain of the pork, pulling it apart with the fork, but if it’s cooked right pulling the pork is not a big deal. I find the potato masher does most all the work.

The last steps are simple.  Put some pulled pork on a slice of bread, eat it like a taco, and see how it tastes.  It’s a good time to add one of your spices if you want a particular taste to stand out more.  All up to you.

Just two things left.  If you are going for a more commercial tasting pulled pork, add a bottle (or more) of barbeque sauce along with liquid left in the pot your butt was cooked in.  It’s good without it but your guests may think it’s better with the BBQ sauce.  That’s probably what they are accustomed to.

Then there is the liquid left in the cooking pot.  A lot but not all the liquid left behind is grease, and we’ve been taught that grease is bad for us. And I’m sure it is. But you don’t eat pulled pork every day.  Chances are you don’t eat it often at all. 

The hidden truth about grease, or any kind of fat, is that it makes food taste really good.   To get your pulled pork to the texture you want; first add the barbeque sauce (if using it) and then some (or all) the liquid from the pot. I’ve done it both ways. Don’t skimp. Live a little.

My kids talk to me about food a lot. My daughter was a food science major, and my son is a great cook like his sister. They’ve been trying to avoid high fructose corn syrup, or any corn syrup really, for years. I’ve gone along. They’re smart kids. By checking sauce ingredients, I’ve found a barbeque sauce sweetened with cane sugar called Montgomery Inn.  Not Montgomery, Alabama but a renowned BBQ joint in Montgomery, Ohio.  I like it.  Use as much of any kind of sauce as you like. It’s important to make this creation your own. 

And then serve it on a quality bun while it’s hot.  Put some in the fridge for later. Freeze some. Share it with friends.  A whole pork butt makes a big bunch of pulled pork. Enjoy it.

And don’t worry about the specific amount of anything.  It’ll turn out fine.