This year, we are not going to share recipes on the traditional Christmas dishes but we are going to live up to our blog name and cook dishes that are beyond the norm over this season and we hope you are as excited as we are!! 🙂 🙂

Just in case some of you have not heard of this dish before….. Please bear with me if you are already a veteran of this dish, here is a brief introduction of Pull Pork.

Pulled pork is a method of cooking pork slowly at low temperatures and traditionally it is smoked.

Nowadays the more common way of cooking is non-barbecue method such as using a slow cooker or a domestic oven, allowing the meat to become tender enough so that it can be “pulled”, or easily broken into individual pieces.

For this dish, I decided to cook it over the stove using a stock pot with a good air tight lid. This was so I could test out the method as well as the pot that I was using. Some mentioned that it took them up to 5 to 6 hours to cook this dish but I had a flavourful and succulent pull pork dish in just slightly below 3 hours. Some might not agree with my method as this is not the usual way of cooking pull pork but I think “different stroke for different folk” is applicable here. Hahaha.

I piled my pull pork over my home made hamburger buns and coleslaws. If you like a Mexican dish, you may drape it over nachos or roll it into burritos or if you are a rice person spoon it over rice. A good dish to serve if you have a crowd to feed. It is just super duper yummy. 😀

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Serves 18 persons (if not more)

Prep time: 15 mins + overnight

Cook time: 3 hrs

Ingredients:

1.8kg to 2 kg pork shoulder/shoulder butt

For Marinade:

4 tablespoons brown sugar

1 ½ tablespoons chili powder

2 ½ tablespoons paprika/smoked paprika

1 ½ tablespoon cumin

1 ½ tablespoons salt

2 teaspoons thyme

½ teaspoon black pepper

3 tablespoons Dijon mustard

5 cloves of garlic, minced

Other ingredients (for the following day):

4 to 5 medium red onions

1 tablespoon cooking oil

Hamburger buns (homemade or store bought – Optional)

Coleslaws (homemade or store bought – Optional)

Method

Preparation for the Meat:

1. Trim off the fats from the pork.
2. Rub it with 2 tablespoons of salt and let it rest for 5 minutes.
3. Rinse off the salt and pat dry.
4. Place it on a tray to be marinated.

Preparation for the Marinade:

5. In a small bowl, mix together the dry ingredients: paprika, chili powder, brown sugar, salt and pepper.
   
6. Rub the dry mixture all over the pork.
   
7. Add the Dijon mustard and minced garlic and rub the mixture all over the pork.
8. Cover with plastic wrap and pop it in the fridge for a couple hours or overnight (I marinade it overnight.)

Cooking of the Meat:

9. Bring the meat out from the fridge and let it rest till room temperature.
   
10. Peel and slice the red onions thinly.
    
11. Heat oil in the stock pot and then add the sliced onions to sauté.
12. Once it is fragrant, add in the meat and 2 or 2 ½ cups of water to slightly cover the meat.
13. Bring it to boil.
    
14. Cover with the lid and reduce the heat and cook it slowly for 2 hours 45 minutes to 3 hours.

Shredding the Meat:

15. Once it is very tender, remove it from the pot and let it rest for 5 minutes.
    
16. Use two forks to pull the meat away from one another.
    
17. Add it back into the pot with its sauce and mix well to keep it moist and succulent.
18. If necessary, add a little more of the dry marinade and salt to taste

Assembling of Pull Pork Burger:

19. Slice the hamburger buns into half.
20. Lightly butter the halved bun.
21. Toast it slightly.
    
22. Top the bun with shredded pork and then the coleslaw.
23. Serve immediately with side dishes such as mash potatoes, chips or more coleslaw.

Note:

1. If you are using this method, you will need a good non-stick pot with a heavy air tight lid so that the moisture is kept within the pot while cooking the meat.
2. If you are making pull pork burger, please do not scoop too much sauce from your shredded pull pork and coleslaw otherwise your burger will be soggy.

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