How Do I Pulled Pork

This far into a project like this, trying all the sandwiches on Wikipedia’s big List of Sandwiches, we’re running into so many variations on a theme, or even outright repeats. Nearly 4 years ago, when we first started, one of our first sandwiches was “Barbecue.” I wrote then about pulled pork, a form of barbecue which, then and now, is a regular occasion at my house (though I do things a little differently now than I did then).

Pulled pork is, put simply, a slow-cooked piece of tough pork, usually a butt though the picnic ham can be used as well, cooked at low temperatures for such a long time that the collagen in the connective tissue renders into gelatin and the pork becomes so tender that it falls, or pulls, apart with a little pressure from a fork or other blunt implement–i.e., it doesn’t need to be cut apart with a knife. When I think of pulled pork, I’m generally thinking of smoked pulled pork, though I’ve been to many a party where a pork butt hooked up with a bottle of Sweet Baby Ray’s in a crockpot for 8 hours and gave birth to a sloppy mess perfect for soaking up large amounts of alcohol.

Pork butts can also be roasted or braised to obtain similar results–Mexican Carnitas could be considered a form of pulled pork, and cochinita pibil isn’t far off either. My family does a hog roast every year over Labor Day weekend, where the hog is butchered, individual sections wrapped in foil and injection-marinated, then roasted, still in foil, over a charcoal fire for around 12 hours. The result is incredibly tender pork without a huge hit of smoky flavor but with plenty of pork flavor enhanced by the paprika, garlic, onion, vinegar, and additional savory flavors of the marinade. It’s something I look forward to every year, and have tried in fits and starts to replicate on my own.

Still, when I slow-cook pork at home, I’m generally going with pork butts in the smoker. And when I order a pulled pork sandwich of one form or another at a restaurant, that’s what I usually expect as well. In the past month I’ve had a fairly standard pulled pork sandwich on a hamburger bun from a north-side Chicago favorite, I’ve had a bao with pulled pork and banh mi type pickled vegetables from a food hall outpost of a celebrity chef spot and I’ve had a pulled pork and bacon melt (called the Hossa) from a local joint in the South Suburbs. All, regardless of their respective strengths and weaknesses as sandwiches, at least gave the impression of the meat having been smoked (though one of them also had the caramelized sauce characteristic of time spent in a crockpot as well).

Pulled pork is, to my mind, a fairly forgiving form of barbecue. It requires patience, as the connective tissue in a pork butt takes the long slow application of low heat to render into gelatin, but there are mitigating factors for almost any mishaps along the way. If you take the pork out of the smoker too early? Serve the parts that are ready and finish the rest in a slow cooker or wrapped in foil in a 250° oven. Leave it in too long? Well I personally like the crispy bits, but the center should still be nice and tender. Mess up your spice rub and make it too salty/herby/spicy? The surface-to-volume ratio of a pork butt makes that rubbed surface a very small percentage of the whole, and the smoke flavor will cover many mistakes anyway.

These days when I’m making pulled pork, I wash the pork butt(s) with white vinegar the night before, slather them in mustard, and coat them in a spice rub then let them sit on a rack in the refrigerator overnight. What’s in the spice rub you ask? Always paprika, salt, cayenne, white pepper, garlic powder and onion powder, then whatever combination of additional spices and herbs occur to me (or are within reach) at the time.

Once the pork has been prepared in this way, basically all I have to do to eat pulled pork sandwiches for dinner is get up at 6am to start the smoker. If I oversleep? We’re eating late.

Visually, the pork is ready when it’s started slumping in on itself, the connective tissue no longer able to maintain the meat’s shape. Temperature-wise, you want to let pulled pork get to around 190°F. This goes against what you learn roasting or grilling other types of meat, and you certainly wouldn’t want to let a loin get to this temperature, or a nice steak. But pulled pork isn’t about keeping the meat’s natural juices, or even about fat. It’s about turning collagen into gelatin, and that takes time and temperature.

That time waiting for the pork to be ready can be spent doing productive things like making cole slaw, or baked macaroni and cheese, or a pot of greens. Or all three.

Regardless of sides, once the pork is ready, it’s best to rest it wrapped in foil and swaddled in a towel to help hold in and equalize that temperature for a good half hour or so. There are special pork-pulling implements that look kind of like plastic Wolverine claws you can wear on your hands but despite how fun that seems, I’ve never used them. Just a couple of big serving forks stabbed into the meat and pulled past each other to cause it to shred into strands.

So this is what a pulled pork dinner at my place looked like recently:

I’ve gotten lazy with my sauce-making, and these days I mostly use a 2:1:1 mix of Sweet Baby Ray’s, cider vinegar, and Louisiana Hot Sauce. Not too much of it, just enough to give a little flavor. I like the cooling and crunch of a mayonnaise-based coleslaw right there in the sandwich but there have been times I’ve kept it on the side as well. The greens were made with some homemade bacon that I had cured and smoked in anticipation of the many tomatoes I hoped my garden would deliver in August and September. (BLT season! Hurray!) The mac & cheese used a sauce containing extra sharp cheddar, mild cheddar, parmesan, and sharp provolone.

It was an outstanding dinner, but even with my two college-age sons home for the summer, two full pork butts were too much for us to finish in a sitting. I have plans for some of what’s left but one thing I had to do was make my own version of the Hossa sandwich mentioned above. The restaurant where it is served has terrible lighting and the pictures turned out awful. In addition, while I very much like the place, they used too much pork with too sweet a sauce for the sandwich to really come together. A melt should cohere rather than fall apart. It’s a great, indulgent, multi-textured sandwich, either in the homemade version or the one I got at Hog Wild.

I still have some pulled pork leftovers to get through this week. I’ve got ideas–leek soup with pork, Japanese curry, pozole, more chili, more sandwiches–and I need to start using them, ’cause I know I’ll be bringing home more delicious pulled pork from the hog roast next week. It’s something I can’t ever see myself getting sick of though. It’s such a delicious and adaptable protein. I may one day run out of new ways to use pulled pork but the basics will never go out of style.