Pulled pork… or not so pulled.
So I’ve always loved cooking, and loved doing stuff “low ‘n slow” and, loved the BBQ. In 2015, I got half tempted to pursue my dream of running a restaurant – and started really reading up on a lot of techniques, recipes and went on a cooking course or two.
But then work “got in the way” (or more specifically, I allowed it to get in the way) and whilst I cooked a lot (I mean, ya gotta eat, right?) I certainly didn’t take that many photos and/or undertake any big cooking projects.
Then, y’know what happened? Something that no-one ever saw coming (actually, I bet loads of people saw it coming, just no-one in any position of power).
“Lockdown”.
My business was at the time, web design and marketing. I’d actually already decided to move on and do something else with my life (specifically getting into more technical work) but throughout lockdown, I did what a hell of a lot of other people did. Started to get back into what I love.
During this time, I ruined a LOT of meat.
I mean a LOT.
But it never went to waste (with the exception of maybe once or twice) and very often whilst I got nowhere near the results I wanted, the food was actually alright.
This is a classic example.
One of the butchers in our town, who I always used to go to on special occasions (as many people would do) started running a lot of offers (because they primarily sold to restaurants, I think, and so their demand had dropped massively).
Anyway, I got a pork shoulder, and didn’t get it rolled because I know best right? I wanted to do it myself. Well, this is what it looked like:
Yikes.
I can’t remember the marinade – you’ll find that for a lot of my posts I’m going to make over the coming weeks, as I’m going back in time – often a year or two but some of my posts will be for food I cooked 5+ years ago… so I’ll do best efforts on the memory.
Anyway, I’ve had some lessons on tying up meat and whilst I won’t go into detail here, I’d probably do a better job than that!
So, I roasted this in the oven (I imagine I covered it with foil – I’d have been crazy not to do that). Two things I know I did wrong here.
- I didn’t cook it long enough
- I didn’t use a thermometer to make sure it hit the right temperature
You could add a third thing I did wrong, which is I didn’t know what temperature it had to be (for pork to be falling apart, you want it to be about 90-95 celcius).
This is what it looked like:
A fourth thing I did wrong? It wasn’t on a rack. It’s sitting in all that fat/liquid, which ultimately really changes the overall flavour/texture.
You want the pork raised so it can – as a whole – ‘steam’ from the liquid that it’s in the pan with. In fact, if I were to do it now in the oven (which I don’t know I’d do, but let’s just say it’s snowing outside) then it’d be in a deep oven tray, on a rack, and the tray would be filled with apple juice.
OK so then I tried to “pull” it. Cos it’s pulled pork right?
I could show you this image and say it’s the finished article, as it doesn’t look too bad:
But this picture does show you a more accurate representation of how the pork came out:
As you can see, a lot of the pork really didn’t pull apart easily – because quite simply – it hadn’t been cooked long enough or got to the right temperature.
It was however, pretty tasty. Chuck that in a bun with a bit of coleslaw and you’re golden.
So, even if it doesn’t go right – it can still be good!
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