The Unlawful Cook: Bi-Partisan Pulled Pork with Saucy Sauce

Monday, June 25, 2012

Bi-Partisan Pulled Pork with Saucy Sauce

Wow, I realized not only have I not cooked in quite some time, I also haven't posted anything since March 2012. Quick update before I get to the good stuff: I GRADUATED FROM LAW SCHOOL! My graduation was May 5, 2012 and I am now a doctor of the law. YAY.

On a much less enthusiastic note, I am studying for the bar exam about 10-12 hours a day. That leaves little time for me to do much of anything besides sleep, walk my dog, go to class, go to the library, go home and go back to sleep. Showering fits in there too, but cooking has taken a little bit of a hiatus.

However, I decided I would make pulled pork for my friend Whitney's party - we were celebrating the fact that Whitney adopted her dog Oliver about a year ago. She invited some friends and their dogs to come hang out in Zilker Park in Austin and enjoy the afternoon.

I love spicy food, but there were some requests to make it less spicy. I altered my other recipes for pulled pork for this one so, here it is:

Morgan's Bi-partisan Pulled Pork (it is election season after all)

Ingredients:

Pork Shoulder (ours was about 6.5 lbs, and the fat was trimmed mostly)

22-24 oz of good beer (your choice, this is America)

1 jalapaeno pepper (diced)

1 yellow onion (diced)

1/2 honey

1 box of chicken stock (approx. 4 cups)

1 cup brown sugar

1 tablespoon chili oil

1 cup rice wine vinegar

4 clementines (juiced/squeezed)

6 cloves of garlic (smashed and diced)

(the following is by sight and desired taste)

Salt (you will need a fair amount of this)

Pepper

Cayenne

Oregano

Thyme

Dry Ginger

Onion power

3 bay leaves

basil

1 teaspoon cinnamon

rosemary (not too heavy on this)

Directions:

Pre-heat oven to 200-250 degrees, low and slow wins this meal.

So what you want to do first, is take it out of the packaging and into a dutch oven or crockpot - whatever you choose to cook it in, and stab it with a fork all over - this will let the flavors come in and have a party in the meat.

Next, take all the dry ingredients and rub them all over the meat. All over it! Then you want to take the chili oil and drizzle it on top of the meat. Also, take the clementine juice and rub that in with the dry ingredients.

Then, add the rest of the ingredients, cover and place in the oven.

I let it cook for about 5.5 hours. I took it out of the dutch oven and put it into another bowl and used two forks to pull it apart. It is easy to do this while it is still hot.

It was about 1045pm at this point, so I left the sauce for the morning.

Saucy Sauce

In your dutch oven, place on the stove and turn on high. You are going to reduce this for about an hour or more - it will reduce by about 2/3. Now, what's in the pot at this point is the chicken broth, beer, veggies, and seasoning. This is a good thing. Stir it occasionally while it's reducing. Let it cool for about 20-30 min, and add parts to a food processor or blender. Then you are ready to enjoy it.