Let’s talk about comfort food. I took on my first porkroast after a pretty intense craving for some pulled pork mustered up a few days ago after having an extremely delicious pulled pork slider at the Alembic in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood near my house. Maybe it was the magic of the cocktails along with it (perhaps the best blood & sand I’ve ever had!), or the horseradish mayo on the sweet, soft bun, but I was left wanting more. Not surprisingly, this 6-hour roast became my project a few Sundays ago.
3-3.5 lb pork shoulder/pork butt
1T oregano
1T paprika or smoked spanish paprika
4T brown sugar
1T cayenne/chili powder or more
2 tsp salt
2 tsp fresh cracked pepper
2 tsp garlic powder or garlic salt
BBQ sauce – vinegar based, spicy
BBQ sauce – sweet with molasses
Buns – I grabbed mine from the Japanese bakery
Buy good quality meat; if it does not come deboned and tied up, use cooking twine to pull it back together. Mix the spices (if you don’t have all on hand and won’t reuse the individual spices if you were to buy them, Penzey’s makes a similar mixture that should suffice, perhaps with the addition of a little more chili heat and brown sugar, which you can add on your own. Be sure to get plenty though, as you want to be generous with the rub) and rub onto the meat, wrap up and let sit overnight in the fridge or up to 2 days.
Heat oven to 300 degrees. Place pork into a ceramic or glass container that fits it but is not excessively large. Cook for 3 hours.
After 3 hours, begin basting the pork every 20 minutes or so with bbq sauce (spicy for 2x more than molassas) and its own drippings for another 3- 3 1/2 hours.
Cut off strings and pull with two forks into bits to save. When serving, mix in more warm bbq sauce of your choosing.
Leave a Reply