Pulled Pork for Beginners | Kenji's Cooking Show

Haven its Kenji I'm gonna show you how to barbecue a pork shoulder so BBQ pork shoulder this is like beginners barbecue it is the most foolproof thing in the world pretty much it's really really difficult this group of pork shoulder because there's so much fat and connective tissue in here that you know the trick is you cook it till it's done and then that's it even even if it gets a little overdone whether your temper temperature fluctuates a little bit doesn't make too much difference there's so much fat and connective tissue in there that it stays nice and moist really no matter what you do to it so the only thing you can do wrong is to undercook it but there are easy ways around them so you know you can get very complicated with barbecue but I generally take a a lazy approach to it I kind of just like throw it on there I cook it till it's finished and then I take it off and I don't really bother with I don't really bother with much in terms of like you know I don't use a thermometer I don't really pay much attention to what temperature the grill is at or the the smoker is at I definitely don't stick a thermometer in the meat I basically just cook it till it's done you know the approach that I use you have to be willing to accept that it might be done in eight hours it might be done in 12 hours you know probably not any faster than seven or eight hours for a pork shoulder this size but and so you have to be kind of a little bit flexible about when it's done but other than that it's I think it's the most foolproof way to do it and it gives you plenty of time to sit around and drink beer or drink mint juleps or drink whiskey bourbon whatever you want hearts ulcers all right so what I did is I got my pork shoulder there I rubbed it if I was going to do this like real hardcore I would probably rub it overnight and leave it to sit overnight so that the salt has a little bit of time to penetrate the meat and keep it juicier but I'm not gonna bother this pork rub is a home this rub is a homemade rub that I have it's mainly it's got paprika brown sugar I'll link a recipe to it and I'll put the recipe in the description paprika brown sugar garlic onion oregano some other things salt salt sugar and spices are mainly all right and I'm gonna take this is a like a quarter of a chimney of coals that I've lit already gonna put them all over just one side of the grill okay and now I generally use the snake snake method which is where take some extra coals so the idea here this this is a you know southern barbecue in the style of the southern us so low and slow the idea is that we want to cook the pork shoulder nice and slow so that the collagen in it the connective tissue has a chance to break down and convert to gelatin and that happens at temperatures once the pork hits around 170 degrees or so that's when that starts to happen and then over time the tough shoulder becomes tender oops so we're gonna make a little sort of like a snake of coal and the idea here is that as the as the this initial fire is gonna die out but this little snake of coals they're gonna light sort of one at a time and move along its going to move along the chain until eventually they're all going to they're gonna help keep a help maintain like a slow even heat so that you can leave this and let it sit there for hours without really having to think about it I'm also going to throw in a couple wood chunks here just for the start all right and now we're going to be cooking over indirect heat so pork shoulder so this is pork shoulder it's also known as pork but even though it's not the but it's the actually it's actually the shoulder pork butt is pork butt is pork shoulder you can might also see called Boston but it comes from the the turn comes from but barrels back when pork used to be salted and packed into barrels it would it would be packed into barrels called butts because of the because of the type of types of wood joints that were in them and so people started calling it Boston butt and I mean and that name has stuck since then support but is pork shoulder this one is bone-in you could use bone net you can use bone doubt you can use a whole picnic shoulder which includes sort of the the Boston but plus the the part that sticks out the I don't know what you call it the picnic is what it's called it's it doesn't really matter it's all very very forgiving stuff this is probably about five pounds or so torque shoulders range from like five to eight pounds you want to plan I'm probably about three-quarters of a pound of a uncooked meat per serving because it cooks down a lot so it'll come down each each pound will come down to probably about you know to lose probably a good forty percent of its weight so with a five pound shoulder like that you can serve easily seven or eight is you know six to six to eight people big sandwiches or use it for a number of other things alright so we got our grill going gonna set the vents to just slightly cracked like that put the lid over here the vents on this side also just slightly cracked like that so that basically you know limiting the oxygen flow is basically welcome it what regulates temperature inside there and and sort of defines how those coals are going to be burning so low small vents means lower temperature because the coals cannot don't get enough oxygen to burn as hot and then that's it we're basically gonna sit there and let it smoke I might check on it in an hour or so throw a couple more wood chunks in make sure that the coals are lighting up make sure there's not getting too hot I don't bother putting a temperature throat probe into the pork if you want to you can but you'll probably find is that it'll raise and it'll rise up steadily and temperature and then once it hits about like 150 or 160 degrees it kind of plateaus that's called the stall and that's the point that the plateau point is the point at which mousse Chur evaporating from the pork is evaporating at a rate that counteracts the amount of energy being pumped into it so it kind of sits at that temperature for a little while that's totally normal it's going to continue to rise after that some people do what's called the Texas crutch which as you wrap it in foil when it comes to that stall point um I don't bother III really think you know barbecue especially pork shoulders I'd like to take full advantage of the fact that it's so forgiving which means that I just don't really care too much about it I just let it go do its thing and then tonight I'll be back here probably in you know I'll stop checking on it every hour or so and I'll be back at the very end and probably eight to ten hours and well know it's done I'll show you I'll show you how we know it's done but we'll be eating this either tonight or maybe tomorrow but alright so I will be back in one hour or so maybe a little more so at this point most of the coals have burned down I added another chunk of wood on there and I also like kind of shook out some of the show got some of the ashes that we're collecting up there into the bottom I have another chunk of wood so you can see that snake is starting to light here and as it goes it's going to progress around here and it's going to keep our pork cooking I also stole a little bit of the a little bit of the crunchy fat because I like that stuff alright I'm just gonna put it back here let it sit for another 1 more hour so you can see temperatures at around 225 which is what we want and here's what's happening so you can see that snake of coals is sort of sneaking along you know probably at some point before it gets to the end I'll wrap this one back around the other end so that it doesn't get too close to the pork and I can just keep it going all night but yeah we're gonna let that keep going and the pork is pork is looking good it's developing some nice bark on it hmm man all right I'll be back in just about three hours so my fire had started to get a little low and the temperature is dipping below 200 so I added I basically put it in that a little nother another small little pile of coals there and I decided to make my snake of coals about double double width instead of single width so that the flame would stay a little bit hotter so the temperature he would stay a little bit hotter I also opened up the bottom vents all the way I'm keeping the top fence I'm gonna keep him about half way cracked and then I stuck this one wood chunk here in the middle just a little sort of self acknowledges that it and it's delicious but it's not quite tender yet it'll probably be another couple hours at least so I will be back in three more hours I don't how long has been total six hours ish give this loaf mm-hmm tastes good so turtle is done you want to stick your fork in now this is not done so you should be able to sticking them very easily and kind of twist it without much resistance but if it feels kind of bouncy at all like that it's not done yet this fire is getting real low so I'm gonna add a few more coals I'll build another little pile again and this time I you know I'm just gonna build a little pile I think it'll be enough for it to carry over and finish so I think our total cooking time is I hope I end up being around I don't know around eight or nine hours I think this should do it that should do it back here you would Chunk throw that back on top get a little bit more smoke there at the very end and all right I'm gonna cover this up for one last little burst and I'll see you in a couple more hours all right fires just about dead I'm good you can see the bone sticking out a little bit here yeah just pull out a little bit hmm so when it's done it should shred apart easily like that and be super juicy and delicious mmm all right I'm actually gonna be eating this tomorrow so I will see you tomorrow all right so it's the next day I had this in the fridge overnight but what I'm gonna do now is so you could have the day that you do it you can shred it if you want but what I like to do is I like to wait until the next day and then sort of treat it like carnitas where instead of just pulling it I'm gonna pull it shred it and then actually crisp it up in the oven under the broiler actually well right now actually I just have to UM have 500 keys you could do it you could do it under broiler to but what it does is that adds texture to it and so this is what you're looking for by the way when it's done it should not fall off the bone but it should pull off the bone so when you pull it the bone should come out clean like that and that's a sign that is basically cooked but not overcooked but then again you know I like I said pork shoulder is very forgiving so even if it's overcooked it's still gonna taste great all right so we want to get that bark and all the meat okay and then we'll roughly shred this up by hand if you were you know depending on what part of the country you're in they treat this different ways so like in in Eastern North Carolina you would chop this up and have sort of chopped pork sandwiches whereas in other parts of the South you would pull it the way I'm doing right now I generally find pulling is better because you you lose a little bit less moisture that way and I find sort of the you get a little more interesting texture but you can feel free to do it however the however you want if you want you can chop it with a knife or with a cleaver okay we're gonna pull it into big chunks like this keep it nice and chunky and then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna season it with my hands first [Music] all right so we are also gonna season season at Eastern North Carolina style which is with a little cider vinegar so they make a sauce out of cider vinegar chili sometimes a little sugar rather than making sauce I was going to do this the easy way which is just to sort of drizzle some apple cider vinegar over it give it a little chili flake not too much some salt because the exterior of that meat was seasoned but the interior was not and then I'm a sugar not too much about a about a tablespoon or so and we'll mix this all up your little haste hmm great alright I was gonna go strangest oven oops I left my uh this is a little bread baker I was making a loaf of bread in here the other day alright does it go in the oven and we're just gonna leave it in there till it crisps up and warms through so probably about 15 minutes or so all right so I'll be back in 15 minutes alright so there we go so if you ever worried that you don't get in a bark from just the regular pulled pork this is what I do I do it well this is how you would finish a tray of carnitas you would either do it like that or you would deep-fry it but this ends up giving you a lot more of those sort of crusty delicious crusty bits and then we can shred it a little bit more with a spork but I do tend to like to leave it inside a larger chunks because I find it ends up being a little bit juicier so my friends Robert and Anna who run the bakery bak house in San Mateo down the street from my restaurant they made me these they made these milk bun milk bread hamburger buns so we're gonna use those for these sandwiches they actually also I gave him a bunch of plums from my tree and they made these EM plum turnovers as well which are delicious but all right so for this sandwich we're doing bun I'm gonna do some pickles on it coleslaw this is like a chops losses is basically just chopped cabbage is actually napa cabbage cuz that's what I had in my fridge napa cabbage carrots seasoned with mayo cider vinegar salt pepper sugar and a little mustard a big pile of the pork ooh little bit too big all right all right I'm gonna take a bite of mine and then bring the rest out to them I got that mm-hmm smoky vinegary sweet could you see delicious all right Oh shabu I win come on you want a little too here you go buddy all right Chavez sit good girl here you go buddy all right guys gals non-binary pals I will see you next time like [Music]

Channel: J. Kenji López-Alt

Views: 234,759

Rating: 4.9046631 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: 4u_bA6BcUH8

Length: 18min 17sec (1097 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 24 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/CrownReserve]

Looks good! Have you done it with the single line of coals before? I’ve always done the snake with double shingling and maybe a cap and can usually get pork done and tender a little faster. I noticed you had to add fire a couple of times - maybe led to a longer cook than you anticipated?

And I endorse the EF outta carnitas style. I may have drizzled some bacon grease once or twice in my life just before the rehear too.

[u/nordecketh]

Do you find that the meat continues to pick up smoke flavor after 3-4+ hours of cooking?

[u/EffectiveFlan]

Have you ever looked into getting/trying a Slow n Sear?

https://www.amazon.com/Adrenaline-Barbecue-Company-Slow-Sear/dp/B01HZXPK5E

I've been using one and it's made temperature control a little easier.

[u/doublemazaa]

Thanks Kenji. Really enjoying your YouTube channel lately.

I was hoping you could talk about staying organized and keeping the kitchen clean while cooking.

I am impressed how quickly you can cook. I always feel like I spent a ton of time being disorganized while cooking, and then my kitchen is a mess when I’m done.

Weaving tips into your future videos would be appreciated! Cheers!

[u/ShartyMcPeePants]

Just made your oven pulled pork last night. It was amazing! My fiancé is jealous of how often I talk about you btw! Thanks for all your amazing work!

[u/ElPatronLos]

I thought you were going to end up eating it before it was actually done. Lol. Those charred bits are the best

[u/ticktockaudemars]

“I just let it go”... adjusts coals every hour

“I don’t use a thermometer” takes fork and shreds up a whole side to check doneness.. lol.

But great video man. Appreciate you!