While we were visiting family in the U.S. there was a sort of collective cooking thing going on. Different people or couples would volunteer to provide food of their choosing for the entire mass (one night there were 17 of us sitting down to dinner), and the selection never disappointed. This also gave me an opportunity to try out a recipe I had come across in a magazine I am embarrassed to admit that I read. What initially attracted me to this recipe was the simplicity. I’ve made my views about pork clear before, and this is a great porkcentric dish. It is also simpler to make than a gin and tonic (and has fewer ingredients).
I am not really sure why they would call this ‘pulled’, since you basically touch it and it falls apart into an unctuous steamy saucy mass of porky goodness. Ain’t no pulling involved. This is hands-down the simplest delicious thing I’ve ever cooked.
Get a big chunk of pork. I used six pounds of pork butt. The recipe claimed that the cut was not important.
Open two bottles of barbecue sauce. Pour it over the pork in a large baking dish. Put the cover on and bake at, oh, like 250-300 Fahrenheit (120-150 centigrade). Go to the beach for the entire afternoon. Eat.
Notes:
- We served this with lots of toasted bulky rolls, potato salad, and accoutrements (sliced tomato, pickles, onion, lettuce).
- Most people agreed that the vegetables were unnecessary distractions from the porky goodness.
- I bought expensive barbecue sauce, because the cheap ones’ labels made me nauseous. I recommend trying to find one in which high-fructose corn syrup is not the first ingredient, and without too many polysorbital-phosphate sort of things. Also, it seems to me that one bottle would’ve been sufficient, since the cooking pork contributes liquid (while remaining amazingly moist). Put some sauce in a dish with a cute little ladle for slathering over the pork.
- This stuff rocked cold, too, so there’s no reason to cook a small chunk of pork.
- Actual cooking time was about five hours. I started the pork at 300 and my mother, who did not go to the beach for even a fraction of the afternoon, turned it down to 250 toward the end.
A butcher’s window promotion Magda photographed in Poland. Previous cannibalistic shills were pictured on August 2nd and August 25th. Another questionable marketing gambit was discussed back on the ides of March. The last recipe I posted was here.
You can subscribe to comments on this post