Hi, Chef Matt here! Today, I want to teach
you a super simple recipe for a Bourbon
Barbecue Braised Pork Shoulder. First, we're going to start with a simple
spice mixture. So, we're going to mix together
granulated garlic, onion powder, kosher salt - for those of
you that have watched my videos, you know I'm all about kosher salt -
just a pinch of cayenne pepper, cracked black pepper, got some fresh
toasted cumin that's ground, and then last but not least, some smoked
paprika. Okay, so here we have our pork shoulder. I
put a little paper towel underneath just to get
some of that moisture off, and so first I'll take that off, put that to
the side. So, this spice mixture, with nice dry
fingers, we're gonna mix that up and then heavily coat and very evenly
this pork, okay? It's okay if some comes off
because we're gonna put it all in our little uh
Le Creuset here, but you just want to evenly
spread it out, okay? Make sure you get all the sides.
You can even dab it if some of it comes off.
The fat side here, we want to make sure, don't trim any of it off. Just let
all that kind of render off in the
cooking pot here. You really want to make sure you're nice and even to get all
those sides. If there's any little openings here, you
can put a little bit inside there, okay? Get in all those nooks and crannies,
okay? All right, there we go.
Dab it. So, that fat side is going to continue to render
down, so what we want to do is put that on the top. We'll just let all that fat
kind of render down, so I'm going to put it in my pot here,
and then any of that spice mixture that you have left, just kind of lay it right
over the top. Make sure you use all that and then just
kind of spread it out. Okay, next, we're going to mix our sauce
together. So, we have a couple cups of whatever favorite barbecue sauce you
have here, brown sugar,
bourbon, and apple cider vinegar. So, we want to
mix this together, just whisk this until all of the
ingredients come together and that brown sugar has dissolved
in these liquids. Okay, now that it's mixed, pretty well
dissolved, we're gonna put a majority of this
liquid mixture around. We're going to put a little bit
on top, but we don't want to wash away all those spices,
so we'll put a little bit in the front, a little bit in the back, and then just kind of drizzle a little
bit and the rest on top. Give it a scrape, get all that
goodness out. Okay,
and then, so there you have that. We're gonna put our lid on and put this
in the oven. Now, the beauty of this recipe is you can
cook this two different ways. If you're a crock pot cooker, maybe 10 to
12 hours on low, or I like to use the oven.
So we're gonna go about 275 degrees for about seven to eight hours. What
you're looking for when this comes out is that meat just starting to split open
and very very fork tender, almost like you
can just pull it apart. So, it's best to let this rest for about
a half hour. Just let the temperature come down a little bit, it won't be so
intense. Wow, look at that. Just this beautiful
kind of mahogany look to it. It's going to have a good
amount of fat on top, which you could just
skim off, but as you can see here, we've got,
you know, the pork just kind of cracked in the middle. Oh, just
really really nice and soft. You can see some of this fat on top is kind of
gelatinous, and again, you can eat it if you love it or you can
just kind of pull it off and put it to the side, but
I just want to plate a little bit. I'm just going to take a few
chunks off and you can see how easily that just comes off and how beautiful.
I mean, look at that, a little bit of fat's okay, fat is flavor.
You know, you can serve it just like this, you know, with with some rice.
You can put it between a couple of pieces of bread and have a beautiful
sandwich. I like to kind of eat it all those ways.
And then, you can just take some of this sauce, and if the sauce reduces,
see it just, it's nice and thick. You got a little sweet, little savory,
it's just gorgeous. If it over reduces, you can add a little
bit of water into that and thin it out a little bit, however you'd like.
But just beautiful. So, our Barbecue Bourbon Braised Pork Shoulder,
goes fantastic with our Wine of the Month
with Zac Brown, our Uncaged Spirit. Cheers, enjoy!
