Thursday Tunes!
Paradise Vending - Farm To Market
Mogwai - Folk Death 95

Recipe time

I got an email today asking me to send along a recipe to the sender, add a friend to the email and pass it on. It’s sort of a chain I guess, but since it didn’t involve urban legends or Nigerian banking scams I said what the heck. Here’s what I sent along.

littlerobothead’s nowhere-in-particular style pork shoulder

- 1 large pork shoulder, dashed with salt and pepper and garden variety sodium-based tenderizer
- 1 onion, minced finely
- 1 tsp of real, honest to goodness butter
- 3 cups ketchup (I know, I know…)
- 1 cup apple cider vinegar (+/-)
- 3 tbsp brown sugar
- 1 tsp ground black pepper
- 1 tbsp molasses
- 1 tsp ground cumin (or to taste)
- a few passes with the nutmeg and a fine grater
- optionally, some Texas Pete or whatever hot sauce you can get regionally

Prep:

In a medium saucepan heat butter to bubbling and add onion, sauteeing until transparent. Add ketchup, vinegar and sugar. You may need to play around to get the tanginess where you want it. I usually do depending on who’s eating. Add the remaining sauce ingredients and simmer until the edges of the body in the pan turn a deep red–almost brown. Remove from heat and cover.

Now this is important: since most people don’t have a smokehouse handy the only real way to slow cook will be in the oven. Home ovens are great because you don’t have to add wood to them and watch them all the way through the 12 hour cooking process. However, they excel at drying meat out fast. To keep it from happening you need to sear any meat you plan on cooking in your oven or broiler for more than 10 minutes. For an entire shoulder you may need to get creative about finding a pan that large. Once you do, heat it with a smidge of butter inside until the butter is bubbling and getting just this side of brown. Then put the shoulder in and sear on all sides for two minutes per side. RESIST THE TEMPTATION TO MUCK ABOUT WITH THE MEAT. You’re going to want to make sure it isn’t sticking, and poke at it and all that and I’m here to tell you: it’s going to stick a little, get over it. You’ll thank yourself when you pull the shoulder out of the oven and you can pull the bone out in one piece with no effort. Just sear it. Walk away if you have to. (Jeez, OCD much?)

So now your meat is seared and it needs to go into a large casserole, preferably metal. Put it into your preheated oven (you were preheating right?) @ 325º for about 10 minutes UNCOVERED. Now here’s another critical trick: when the first 10 minutes are up a) open the oven, b) baste the meat for the first time with the sauce, c) cover it with foil, d) walk away for the first 40 minutes and do nothing. The trick here is to give the meat as much time alone as possible. Baste once every forty minutes or so, and maybe even pour some of the sauce into the bottom of the pan. You need to keep the moisture in at all costs. Here’s another trick: cover the meat, not the pan. Get the foil close as close to the meat as possible. If you’re worried about stickage spray the dull side of the foil with canola spray. Cover what you’re cooking, not what you’re cooking in.

The meat will need to cook about six hours. Sorry kids, that’s just the way it goes. It may need to cook for less time than that depending on the age of your oven and how good a job you’ve done with the foil. Basically, what we’re looking for is meat that “threads” when you pull at it with a fork. We want distinct, 1/4 inch threads and no resistance on the fork. It sounds tough, but it’s so easy. What people forget about cooking meat in the oven is that it’s all about leaving it alone and making sure it has enough water, sort of like a pit bull.

Clearly, my BBQ sauce is sort of a bastardized version of several regional varieties. Eastern Carolina barbecue doesn’t really appeal to me all that much, since it’s really just shoulder soaked in vinegar. Not much trick to that is there? KC style gets closer to my taste, but I do like the long deliberate cooking time in Carolina style. I haven’t had any true Delta/Memphis style ‘cue, so I can’t comment.
As for the ketchup, you can make your sauce without it by mixing equal parts tomate paste and corn syrup with a splash of water and adding it to the dry ingredients and onion. But where I come from tomate paste and corn syrup with a splash of water is called ketchup…

Enjoy! ~