Southern Pulled Pork

An all-American barbecue classic from the Carolinas, Georgia and Alabama, the name comes from the way this Southern specialty is prepared and served: One pulls handfuls of the succulent, spicy meat off the whole, cooked hog right from the grill pit! The secret to good pulled pork is the slow-cooking process. This time-tested recipe is a simple, "short-cut" version for the dish made in an electric slow-cooker, and it's right on the money. But be warned - though I call this a "short-cut" recipe, it's still no "30-minute meal" and requires hours of cooking time (but it's worth it)!

Ingredients:

3 medium-to-large Vidalia (sweet) onions - may substitute red onions or any other type of onion that is milder than regular white or Spanish/yellow onions
4 - 5 lb. (1.81 - 2.27 kg) pork shoulder ("picnic") roast
2, 16-oz. bottles (950 ml total) BBQ sauce (Open Pit "Chargrill" works great!)
¼ cup (60 ml) mild/medium hot sauce (I like Frank's "Red Hot" for this)
10 - 12 cloves garlic
8 - 10 regular (ham) cloves

~ olive oil or other fat, salt & ground, black pepper for browning the meat ~

Preparation:

Peel the garlic cloves. Cut two of the onions in half, then slice them up. Put the garlic cloves and onion aside while you prep the pork roast.

Remove as much of the fat as possible from the roast and discard it (or save it to use another time in another recipe); season the roast with a light sprinkling of salt and ground, black pepper, then brown/sear the roast in fat/oil on all sides in a large pan on the stove over medium-high heat.

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Make some deep pocket-slits in the roast with a chef's knife and stuff the garlic cloves in them. If some of your cloves are really big, cut them in half. Then stick the small, regular cloves in the roast all around the outside of it.

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Cover the bottom of a large (4 - 6 quart / 3.79 - 5.69 liter) electric slow-cooker with half the onion slices. Put in the roast and cover it with the rest of the sliced onion.

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Cover and cook on the low setting overnight, or for 8 - 12 hours.

DO NOT REMOVE THE LID - DO NOT STIR!

(See my "Tip," below!)

After the 8 - 12 hours of initial cooking time is up, finely dice the third onion and put it aside. Remove the roast from the cooker to a large bowl, remove as many of the little ham cloves as you can see, then get the bones out, shredding the meat up well with a pair of forks as you go (just leave the cooker on the low setting with the lid off while you do this).

With a ladle or large spoon, remove and discard as much of the liquid from the cooker as you can, along with any bigger pieces of onion (but leave most of those sliced onions in the pot!). Place the shredded meat back in the slow-cooker. Add the fresh, diced (third) onion and the sauces. Mix it all well, then cover and cook on the low setting another 10 - 12 hours.

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Again, do not remove the lid or stir during this next cooking phase.

Next, cock the lid a little so as to have the slow-cooker only partially covered, and continue cooking on the high setting until the liquid has reduced down to the point where it is just bubbling around the inside edges of the cooker and the spicy-seasoned, shredded meat is nice and dark on the top in places (it will take another hour or two for it to reduce down sufficiently, so your patience will still be required at this point). You may stir the pork occasionally now to gauge the amount of liquid that has steamed off, but heat will be lost and the amount of time required to complete the job will increase each time that you stir it up.

Once the shredded pork no longer has too soupy of a consistency to it and can be firmly served up out of the cooker in big spoonfuls, you're finished! Remove it from the slow-cooker and lay it out on a nice, big serving platter for your guests. Many folks simply like to dish up a big helping of this pork onto their plates next to their potato salad or other side dishes and eat it with a fork, but most seem to enjoy it served on hamburger buns ("baps") or sliced Kaiser rolls with American, yellow mustard.

Makes approximately 8 - 10 cups (1.81 - 2.27 kg), depending of course on the size of the roast you use. This is the perfect thing for family gatherings, picnics and church socials!

Thank You, Jesus, for the pig!

Tip:

Slow-cookers are a really nice, hands-off way of cooking things like this dish, but it requires an act of Congress sometimes to get them cleaned up afterwards! I use slow-cooker liner bags made by the Reynolds company that seem to be readily available in most American super markets (usually in the same aisles as the foil and cling-film are sold). Lining the crockery of your slow-cooker with one of these bags before filling with your ingredients makes clean-up a cinch; you just pull out the bag, throw it away and wipe out the pot with a damp paper towel. So be sure to check the shops where you live to see if they sell anything like them that you could use!