How to Make Pulled Pork to Die For

First things first. Plan on making this a 2-day event. There’s a reason great barbecue is hard to find. You aren’t going to come home after work and put together a fantastic pulled pork dinner in 30 minutes. Great barbecue isn’t difficult, but you have to be willing to put in the time and effort.

If you’re still reading, then it’s time to go buy your pork shoulder. I use pork shoulder butt roast, but you can also use pork shoulder arm roast, etc. The good news is these cuts of meat are usually among the cheapest you can buy because they are so fatty, but they are perfect for barbecue because you want good fatty meat.

Depending on what your schedule is, I would plan to dry rub the roast in the morning and refrigerate it and let it marinade in the rub during the day. About 5 hours before bedtime start preparing your smoker and let the roast smoke at 225-250° for 4 hours. You can have the crock pot prepared during this time, so that when the pork comes out of the smoker, you put it directly into the crockpot and let it slow cook overnight while you sleep; then the next morning you finish it off.

Now, if you don’t have a smoker or don’t want to smoke it first, you can do it entirely in the crock pot on low for 8-10 hours and it will still be delicious minus the smoky flavor.

So, ready?  Here we go:

Step 1:

Rinse your pork shoulder and pat it dry with a paper towel. Get your dry rub ready. If you don’t already have a favorite dry rub, the Ruby Tuesday Dry Rub recipe is a great place to start. You’ll want to coat the surface of your pork shoulder with something to help the rub “stick”. Some people use cooking oil. I prefer mustard. Just squirt a bunch on and spread it all over the meat evenly.

(Note: It’s a good idea to wear latex food gloves during barbecue preparation, but suit yourself.)

Now, sprinkling rub on like salt and pepper is not the proper way to dry rub meat. I use a measuring cup or a pourable spice bottle to heap it on. Then you rub it all over pressing hard so you’re actually rubbing the spices deep into the fiber of the meat. I often actually cover it with cellophane wrap and pound it with the palm of my hand to beat the spices into the meat fibers. A properly rubbed pork shoulder will look like the photo on the right — a solid thick layer of spices completely covering the surface of the meat on all sides.

As this meat sits and “marinades” these spices will liquefy like a thick barbecue sauce and absorb even more into the meat. If you can’t let it marinade all day, at least let it sit for 30 minutes or so until the rub loses it’s dry appearance and starts looking dark and wet.

Step 2:

Prepare your smoker. I always preheat my smoker to about 500° for about 30 minutes to sanitize it, burn off any drippings left on the grates, and gets the grates hot enough to leave nice sear marks on the meat.

Don’t worry about overheating it. Once you open the door to put your meat in, the temperature will immediately drop down below 200° momentarily. With large cuts of meat like pork shoulder you want to use a more intense smoke flavored chip. Hickory and mesquite are the most popular choices. I generally use mesquite.

If you are new at using your smoker, you’ll want to get an oven thermometer to check the chamber temperature. The built-in thermometers on smokers are notoriously inaccurate. Mine has a 40° difference, so when my smoker thermometer says 275° I’m actually cooking at 235°. You’ll want to try to maintain the temp between 225° and 250° for 4 hours. Monitor it occasionally, adjusting temp and adding chips as necessary to maintain consistent heat and smoke.

Step 3:

Once your meat has been in the smoker about 3 1/2 hours, you’ll want to start preparing your crock pot. I use the Ninja 3 in 1 Cooking System, but you’ll want an oval shaped crock pot large enough to hold an 8-10 lb. roast.

I start by slicing a large onion and layering the onion slices in the bottom of the crock pot. I finely slice or chop 3 large cloves of garlic and spread on top of that. Throw in 2 chicken bouillon cubes as well, and I usually sprinkle 2 or 3 more tablespoons of the dry rub over that. Add 2 cups of water and turn your crock pot to low and let it start heating up.

Once the pork has been in the smoker for at least 4 hours, you can turn your smoker off, take the pork out and place it directly into the crock pot. At this point, you will want to reset the time on your crock pot for 8 hours.

Now, you can go to bed and let the crock pot to it’s work. If I wake up during the night to get a drink or something, I’ll usually turn the roast over somewhere during the middle of it’s slow-cooking cycle.

Step 4:

If you slept for 8 hours, your pork shoulder should be done. It will be falling apart tender, so carefully remove it from the crock pot onto a large cookie sheet or pizza pan. You’ll usually have to remove it in pieces. Pour the liquid in the crock pot through a mesh strainer into a sauce pan. Place this liquid on the stove to boil. Let it boil until it reduces by half — like a thin gravy.

While the liquid is boiling, grab a couple meat forks and start pulling the pork apart. You don’t want to try to get it to fine. We aren’t shredding it. We just want small bite size chunks of pork.

Add the pulled pork back to the crock pot. Once the liquid on the stove has reduced satisfactorily, start spooning this sauce back over the pork. Mix the pork up with a spoon or tongs, and spoon some more sauce. Once all the pork has been evenly coated with this sauce, cover and let it stew in the crock pot with the “warmer” on.

Every 20 minutes or so, stir the pork again as the liquid will tend to settle to the bottom. Let it “stew” or marinade in these juices for at least an hour longer.

Step 5:

This is the step we’ve all been waiting for. I’m a low-carb guy, so I’m going to grab my tongs and put a pile of pork on my plate and level it out. I’m going to top that with some ice cold cole slaw. Season that with some fresh ground black pepper and put two large dill pickle spears on the side of the plate.

If you don’t care about carbs, you can pile the pork on a toasted bun, put the cole slaw on top of the pork. Whether you put pickle slices on the sandwich, or stay with the spears on the side is your call. I just happen to like the big crunchy bite of a cold pickle.

There you have it. It’s the closest thing to food heaven I’ve ever found. Enjoy, and if you try any twists, please share those experiences with me in the comments.

Have fun, stay healthy, and keep barbecuing.

Changing the Way America Cooks One Backyard at a Time

Americans are culinary wusses!

It’s true. America is the spice wimp capital of the world.  We produce the mildest, blandest, least interesting food in the world, and then try to disguise that fact by drowning our food in sugar. People swarm to Chinese, Japanese and Mexican restaurants in search of flavor, but even then, once Americans take ownership of these restaurants, the first thing they do is remove all the authentic flavor from the dishes.

You may think I exaggerate, but I recently went to an American “Mexican” restaurant and ordered the grilled fajita taco salad. I received a plate full of lettuce with some lightly seasoned beef, topped with tomatoes and bell peppers. Are you kidding me? I asked the waiter if I could at least get some jalapeno peppers — a Mexican staple and the most popular pepper in the world. The only thing they had was a jar of pickled jalapeno slices. This is for real. A Mexican restaurant that doesn’t have a single jalapeno in the store. Welcome to America.

So this brings me to my tip. When you first start barbecuing or smoking meat, you will likely turn to Google in search of recipes. Be forewarned, the vast majority of these recipes will have you using small quantities of generic spices and then disguise those flavors will large amounts of sugar. For the love of God, don’t go down this road.

Recommendation #1 — The three spices I can’t live without:

Now, you don’t have to use these brands, but for barbecue rubs or even chili seasonings, these flavors make an enormous difference. The dark chili powder has a deep rich, almost cocoa-like flavor. The Chipotle powder and Paprika are both very sweet and smoky flavored. Before you go out and buy the large quantities I’ve shown here, go to your local supermarket or international grocery and buy a small 2 oz. container and give them a try. I won’t have to sell you, I guarantee.

Recommendation #2 — Don’t follow the recipes:

Any recipe that calls for Cayenne pepper, I substitute Chipotle pepper. Try just sprinkling some of this on your deviled eggs. I’m telling you, there is no wrong way to use it. It’s especially true with barbecue rubs, where you are already trying to add smoky flavor to your food, right?

But here’s the curve ball: Almost all American barbecue recipes are written by confirmed spice wimps. I know you’ve seen these recipes. Your following a recipe to make a cup of chili seasoning and it calls for 1/2 teaspoon of cayenne pepper. What? This is going to season 2 gallons of chili. 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper in 2 gallons of chili is going to do what? You might as well just omit it. No one would know the difference.

So, yes… I sometime borrow other Americans wimpy recipes, but I always modify them for what I’m doing. Where it calls for chili powder, I’ll use dark chili powder, or I might use Ancho chili powder, depending on the flavor profile I’m looking for. When it calls for paprika, I used the smoked paprika, and when it calls for 1/2 teaspoon of cayenne I’ll substitute with something more reasonable, like 2 teaspoons of Chipotle powder.

Of course, you’ll need to experiment to find your own sweet spot, but don’t be afraid of spices. They are healthy and full of flavor. It’s all the sugar we consume that is extremely unhealthy. You may find that if you infuse your food with enough natural flavor to start with, you won’t find it necessary to add all that sugar, including the ubiquitous “barbecue sauce”. Folks, food doesn’t have to be drowned in liquid sugar to be delicious.

Let’s change the way America cooks, and let’s start in our own backyard.

Ruby Tuesday Dry Rub

This isn’t a “knock-off” recipe. This came directly from the Ruby Tuesday Cookbook. If you don’t already have a favorite dry rub recipe, you might want to give this one a try. Heck, you might want to give it a try anyway.

You can also download a printable PDF of this recipe.

• Servings: N/A
• Time: 10 mins
• Difficulty: easy
• Print

Ingredients:

• 1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons chili powder
• 2 teaspoons Chipotle chili flakes or red pepper flakes
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon sweet or hot smoked Spanish paprika
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon granulated garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon ground oregano
• ½ teaspoon ground coriander
• ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
• ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

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Notes:

1. To make this a low-carb or “sugar-free” version, use 1 cup granulated Splenda plus 1 Tbsp molasses in place of the brown sugar.
2. I use Chipotle powder instead of Chipotle flakes
3. I usually quadruple the recipe so I don’t have to mix this up every time, but then I do a lot of barbecuing.  You can store this in airtight plastic jars and it will “keep” as long as any other dry spices.  I buy 20 oz. or 24 oz. jars of spices and then save the jars to re-use after they’re empty.
4. IMPORTANT: Dry rub isn’t meant to be sprinkled on gently like table salt.  You cover the meat with it like you would with breading and then rub it in.  I usually rub a little yellow mustard over the meat to help the rub stick and then after adding a thick coat of rub and spreading it out evenly, I cover it with cellophane and beat it with the palm of my hand to pound the spices into the meat.
5. After applying the dry rub, you can wrap in foil and leave in the fridge overnight to let the meat marinate in the rub.  The rub will liquefy like a barbecue sauce and absorb into the meat fibers.  If you’re pressed for time, then apply your rub before lighting the grill or smoker so it has at least 20-30 minutes to sit before going in the smoker.
6. When the meat is nearly done smoking you can start brushing barbecue sauce on during the last 30 minutes if you like, but personally I think adding barbecue sauce to an excellent dry rub just ruins the dry rub — but it’s your meat, do what you like.
7. One final, but important, tip:  If you don’t brine your meat overnight before smoking, you may need to baste it occasionally to keep it from drying out too much.  Of course, if you’re smoking it you don’t really want to be opening the smoker door at all during smoke time.  So what does that tell you?  Always brine your meat before smoking!  If you didn’t (or don’t have time), you may find that laying strips of bacon on the rack above your meat rack will help add flavor and moisture to your meat.

That’s it.  Enjoy! If you make any modifications that you are particularly happy with, let me know about them in the comments. Happy barbecuing.

Doug’s Basic Barbecue Brine

We’ve all been excited for our summer barbecues. We get our chicken or pork chops on the grill, but when they’re done we are less than thrilled. While they have that wonderful smoky grilled flavor, they tend to be dry and tough. The solution is to soak the meat in a brine solution overnight before cooking.

There are other options. If you’re really rushed for time, you can use something like the Cajun Injector to inject the brine solution into the meat. It isn’t quite as effective as an overnight soak in the brine, but it’s better than nothing. With larger cuts of meat such as brisket or pork shoulder, the injection method is probably more effective than the soak; but with chicken, pork chops, tenderloin, etc., nothing beats a good soak in a brine.

This recipe makes about a gallon of brine. You’ll want to adjust it for your particular need.  This isn’t something you make in bulk and store. If I’m cutting a full pork loin into 1 1/4″ thick chops (about 15 pork chops), it takes about a gallon to completely submerge them. If you’re only making a package of 5 or 6 chicken breasts or pork chops, you may only need a quart and a half, to a half-gallon.

You can also download a printable PDF of this recipe.

• Servings: 1 Gal.
• Time: 15 mins
• Difficulty: easy
• Print

Ingredients:

• 15 cups water (1 cup shy of a gallon)
• 1 cup cider vinegar
• 3/4 cup granulated Splenda
• 3/4 tbsp. molasses
• 3 tsp. dried thyme
• 1/2 tsp. Chipotle powder
• 1/2 cup kosher salt
• 1 tsp. garlic powder
• 3 tbsp. freshly ground black pepper

Directions:

1. In a large bowl, combine all ingredients and stir until the sugar and salt dissolve.
2. Put meat in a seal-able airtight plastic container or large Ziploc bags.
3. Pour brine solution until meat is completely covered.
4. Seal and refrigerate overnight.
5. After removing from the brine solution, thoroughly rinse the meat before cooking. (Hint: After rinsing the meat, this would be the time to apply your dry rub before taking to the smoker — you will use a dry rub, right?)
6. Use brine immediately after making.

Notes:

1. The vinegar in this recipe acts as a meat tenderizer. Don’t worry, the vinegar will cook out and will not leave any taste effect on the meat. If you prefer, you could use apple juice but it would eliminate the sugar-free “low carb” effect of this recipe.
2. If you don’t care about the “low carb” aspect, you could use omit the Splenda and molasses and use 3/4 cup brown sugar instead.
3. The salt is important. When meat soaks in this brine an osmosis take place and the sodium is absorbed into the meat. The effect of sodium is to retain water, so it’s this process that allows your meat to remain moist and juicy while cooking. Too little salt and this doesn’t happen. Too much salt and your meat tastes too salty. When/if you adjust this recipe try to maintain a ratio of 1/2 cup salt to 1 gallon of liquid.
4. Feel free to experiment with the flavor profile. Add some red or white wine in place of the cider vinegar — or beer or bourbon or lemon juice. The essentials are: 1) an acidic liquid for tenderizing, and 2) the salt for moisture retention. Everything else is a marinade ingredient to add flavor to the meat.
   

USDA Carbohydrate Data for the Carb-Conscious

Updated and corrected on 3/1/2015

For those who are serious about counting the carbs, I’ve created a searchable PDF file from the USDA food database which is a fairly exhaustive list of vegetables with carbohydrate, fiber and sugar data for each food item.

The truly brave may want to try the COMPLETE USDA Food Carbohydrate listing. It’s a bit larger file at about 2 MB and takes a few seconds longer to search, but like the condensed version above, once you’ve downloaded it, searching it is easy.  Just CTRL-F anywhere in the document and type your keyword.  This complete listing has the advantage that besides including all food groups, it also includes restaurant and fast foods.

If you just want the condensed vegetable listing, get it here:

https://dougkeesler.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/usda-veggie-carb-data-w.pdf

If you want the complete USDA food listing, get it here

https://dougkeesler.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/usda-complete-carb-data1.pdf

And if you prefer the individual abridge lists to the complete food listing, you might like these:

1. USDA Fruits, Snacks, Entrees & Sides Carb Data
2. USDA Breads, Cereals & Sweets Carb Data
3. USDA Restaurants & Fast Food Carb Data

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UPDATE 3/1/2015:

When I originally posted this article, I later noticed there was an anomaly with the reports showing only values for the 100 gram portion size even though other portion sizes were listed in the report.  This has been corrected with this update and the linked files above now show the correct carb, sugar and fiber count for the listed portion size. I’ve also added a new column showing net carbs for those interested in that result.