I got this recipe from The Splendid Table. The Splendid Table is a really great show on NPR. If you can’t find it on your local NPR station or if, like me, you can’t get NPR ever since the new people down the street built their house, you can listen to the podcast online or just browse the website.
Since I’m including the whole recipe, I’m going to write here about the experience including the few things I did differently. (And I’ll warn you up front, this commentary ended up on the rather verbose side.) The method is what is important here, not so much their specific spice rub. The method really is simply a braise. I use essentially the same method for making pot roast, brisket, or carne adovada. Come to think of it, the slow and low method is pretty much the same for Slow Roasted Sticky Chicken, my all time favorite roasted chicken recipe. I don’t think that there is any better method for making meat come out it’s most flavorful and tender.
I used a pork butt for this and I roasted it in the oven at 250°F for about 5 hours. Pork butt is an extremely fatty cut but the fat is important for tenderizing the meat. And don’t worry, when you shred the pork you will remove most of the excess fat.
For the spice rub, I used Penzeys’ Galena Street Rib and Chicken Rub. I’m sure you can use any spice rub you happen to like. This rub is quite spicy and I also used it in my no-added-sugar homemade barbecue sauce, which turned out quite well. I’ll tack that recipe on at the end.
The recipe calls for a 1/2 cup of bottled smoke. I was afraid that would be too much. I like smoke flavor but I don’t like to be slapped upside the head with it. For me, 1/4 cup was plenty to give the meat a roasted, smoky flavor but you can certainly adjust it to your own preference. Be careful and read your labels when you buy liquid smoke. Good liquid smoke is just that – smoke concentrate that they make by concentrating the smoke from a real wood fire. Some of the bottled brands have smoke “flavor” and sugar and vinegar. I think the type with only smoke concentrate and water is far superior.
This is really a cook-one-day and serve-the-next type recipe. You need to let it braise until the meat just falls apart with a fork. Then you let it cool until you can handle it, shred the pork with a couple forks and separate out the fat. Your local raccoons will greatly appreciate that fat. Strain the meat juices into a separate container and let the fat solidify on top. Then you can easily remove that excess grease and pour the drippings back over the meat. Trust me, you don’t want to miss all the flavor in the juices.
You can reheat it with the juice, with or without the barbecue sauce of your choice. I think I’ve finally found a recipe that works for sugar free barbecue sauce and it’s really very simple. But if you aren’t trying to cut back on extra carbohydrates, you can use the bottled sauce of your choice.
As I said, I also make brisket pretty much this same way. When I was a kid, my parents bought our meat by the half and so, there was only one brisket. We really liked barbecued brisket at our house and Mom developed what we like to call Mock Brisket. Like this pulled pork recipe, you cook it in two stages. The first day, you braise a chuck roast (there are always several of those in a half beef) and then the next day, cover it in barbecue sauce and cook it again. It comes out so tender and juicy that you wouldn’t know it wasn’t brisket.
And by the way, I don’t actually own a slow cooker so I do all my slow cooker recipes in the oven. While I don’t really have anything against slow cookers and they undoubtedly save on electricity, I think that the oven does a better job of evenly heating the meat. You know you can make a pot roast on the stovetop, too, but I think that braising it at 250°F in the oven gives you a more consistent outcome.
Reprinted from Cheater BBQ: Barbecue Anytime, Anywhere, In Any Weather by Mindy Merrell and R. B. Quinn (Broadway Books, A Division of Random House, Inc., 2008) Copyright 2008 by Mindy Merrell and R. B. Quinn.
Okay, here we go. Either we have you hooked at “Ultimate Cheater Pulled Pork” or this book is headed straight for the library’s used book sale. We know that. You know that. So, let’s drop the chitchat and make some cheater barbecue.
In short, you drop a pork butt into the slow cooker, add dry rub and bottled smoke, close the cover, go away for a while, pull or chop the meat and pile it on a bun, add sauce, get out the pickles, open a beer. BOOM! That’s barbecue, baby. Can you feel it? That’s Ultimate Cheater Pulled Pork.
Makes 12 to 14 servings
One 5- to 6-pound boneless Boston butt pork roast or same weight of boneless country-style pork ribs
1/4 cup Cheater Basic Dry Rub (recipe follows)
1/2 cup bottled smoke
Barbecue sauce of your choice
1. Cut the pork butt into medium (2- to 3-inch) chunks (the ribs don’t need to be cut up).
2. Put the pieces in a large slow cooker (at least 5 quarts). Sprinkle the meat with the rub, turning the pieces to coat evenly. Add the bottled smoke.
3. Cover and cook on high for 5 to 6 hours or on low for 10 to 12 hours, until the meat is pull-apart tender and reaches an internal temperature of 190 F.
4. Using tongs and a slotted spoon, transfer the meat to a rimmed platter or baking sheet. Let rest until cool enough to handle. Pull the meat into strands. It should shred very easily. Serve the barbecue piled on buns with your favorite barbecue sauce.
5. To serve the barbecue later, cover and refrigerate the meat when it has cooled. Pour the meat juice into a separate container and refrigerate. Before reheating the juice, skim and discard the congealed fat layer on the top.
6. To reheat the barbecue, place it in a saucepan moistened with some of the reserved juice. Gently heat the meat on medium-low, stirring occasionally. Or, place it in a covered casserole with some of the reserved juice and heat in a 350 F oven for 20 to 30 minutes.
7. While the meat warms, combine the barbecue sauce and some of the additional reserved meat juice in a saucepan. Heat through and serve with the barbecue.
Cheater Basic Dry Rub
This recipe is from our Splendid Cheap Eats collection of affordable recipes. Browse the collection.
Makes about 2/3 cup
1/4 cup paprika
2 tablespoons kosher salt
2 tablespoons coarsely ground black pepper
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon dry mustard
1. Combine all the ingredients in a jar with a tight-fitting lid. Shake to blend.
Ultimate Cheater Pulled Pork on The Splendid Table
Zazzy No-Added-Sugar Barbecue Sauce
1 large can (12 ounces) tomato paste
most of a 20 ounce bottle of diet cola (I used Coke Zero)
2 tablespoons dried onion bits
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon dry rub of your choice
2 tablespoons plain white vinegar
about a tablespoon of dijon mustard
Combine the ingredients and bring to a healthy simmer, stirring constantly. Cook for a few minutes then let sit and gradually cool.
One of the mistakes I made when I was trying different recipes was to taste the sauce and add more spice rub because I didn’t think it was flavorful enough. Trust me on this one, after it sits for a while the flavor will be plenty strong. If it’s not, then is the time to add more spice and cook it some more. Trying to get the sweetness right with artificial sweeteners was a challenge, too. I found a recipe that called for diet cola and I must say, it worked out really well!
This recipe makes about a quart of sauce.
The sauce is even better after sitting overnight, by the way. Plus I took about half of my batch of sauce and added half a cup or so of the meat juices – you know, like the actual recipe suggested! – and oh, my, that works. It bumps the sauce up from “Hey, this is pretty good” to “Oh My God!”
Per tablespoon, sauce has about 5 calories and 1 gram carbohydrate. That’s about 1/5 of traditional barbecue sauce calories and carbs and since I use way more than 1 tablespoon…
