Pulled Pork

I bought my smoker from a guy who literally has a spot in the history books about barbecue. Jumpin’ Jim made a name for himself in competition circles with a method of cooking chicken thighs that won him a couple categories at The American Royal in Kansas City, which is pretty much the Rose Bowl of barbecue contests. He made Jumpin’ Jim’s Competition Chicken available for free on the internet and his method influenced how many people approached winning barbecue for years to come.

I picked up a lot of good pointers from Jim and one of his insights led me to come up with an innovation that made my life a lot easier when it came to making pulled pork: I use a pressure cooker to make it fall-apart tender. Jim told me that meat only takes on flavor from the smoke until it gets to about 140°F., which is usually somewhere around the four-hour mark for pork shoulders if your smoker temperature is in the 250°F.- 300°F. range. After that the cook time is about breaking down the proteins so that the meat becomes tender and so that bark builds up on the surface and contributes its own kind of flavor.

Traditional low-and-slow barbecue means you can be looking at 12-hour cook times or longer for pork shoulders. I find that kind of cook time frustrating. Then one year we gave ourselves a pressure cooker for Christmas and that next spring, as I was beginning to think about outdoor cooking season, a light bulb went off about Jim’s insight: use the smoker for four hours to maximize flavor, then use a pressure cooker for 50 minutes to make the pork fall-apart tender.

The result has been a Godsend. It’s turned a day-long commitment into a reasonable cooking event. And since pulled pork freezes so well and is such a great make-ahead, it’s made catering for large groups more realistic. I’ve served pulled pork for groups of 65-70 people a couple times now. I’d never be willing to do that if I tried to conform to The Extremely Important Rules of Traditional Barbecue and used only wood or charcoal as a fuel source.

I don’t want to be snarky because I really do enjoy the flavor and, especially, appreciate the craft of traditional barbecue. But I do think getting hidebound by the rules can get in the way. It can get in the way of making the cooking experience work for you and it can get in the way of tailoring the food to your own palette.

Speaking of The Extremely Important Rules of Traditional Barbecue, The Kansas City Barbecue Society holds one-day seminars around the country where you can become certified to be a competition barbecue judge. I went to one in Johnston, Iowa. It was fascinating and I got to eat some incredible barbecue from some of the top competition teams in the country, although I must have missed the memo about the dress code because I was the only one NOT wearing a hoodie sweatshirt.

The Method:

Step 1: Cut down a pork shoulder into two or three chunks, coat liberally with a dry rub and refrigerate in a plastic ziplock bag for 4-24 hours. If you want to make your own rub from scratch it’s hard to go wrong with the Memphis Dust Rub from AmazingRibs.com and apply kosher salt separately. Or just use a commercial rub with salt already added.

I’m not sure it makes a lot of difference. No matter how many people try to say their rub is a family recipe and they’d have to kill you if they told you how it’s made, I doubt anybody is putting half-a-cup of saffron in their mix. They all pretty much have the same ingredients. I suspect a sizable number of the competition teams out there are using commercial rubs they buy in bulk at Sam’s Club.

Step 2: Fire up your smoker and put the pork on for a good four hours.

Step 3: Cook the pork in a pressure cooker on high with a half-cup of Stubb’s Pork Marinade and a half-cup water for 50 minutes. You’re essentially steaming the pork tender.

Step 4: Remove from the liquid and pull apart or chop up the pork. Add fresh Stubb’s Pork Marinade at a rate of one tablespoon per pound of finished pork. Adding this last bit of fresh marinade is like adding finishing salt to a salad; it just gives it a little something extra. Do NOT add back any of the liquid from the pressure cooker. That will overpower the lovely flavor of the pork and smoke.

Notes:

It’s really useful to keep notes on the finished weight of your efforts in order to calculate the yield percentage of your system. After a few samples, you can get a good idea of how much finished product you can expect and make calculations about how many servings you will have. Most of the experts I could find said to figure on four ounces per person as a serving size. That works out to about two buns-worth per person.

I personally think the only topping needed is pickled red onions and maybe some Carolina Vinegar Sauce. Putting a heavy barbecue sauce on meat this good just drowns out the flavor.