Ingredients
1 large pork shoulder (the recipe below is for one pork shoulder, but when I cooked it I did several)
To Serve
Soft white buns
Kimchi
Sriracha
Sesame seeds
Chopped fresh chillis
Injection
¾ cup apple juice
½ cup water
½ cup sugar
¼ cup salt
2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
Rub
11g star anise
36g fennel seed
20g sesame seed
20g black pepper
102g Chinese Five Spice
52g paprika
35g ground ginger
30g hot chilli powder
326g dark brown sugar
326g salt
I trimmed and prepared the pork shoulder as I would any other pulled pork recipe. The injection wasn’t essential, but I decided to anyway and injected with the ingredients above mixed together and left for a couple of hours. I made up the rub by blitzing all the rub ingredients together, I used a spice grinder as the star anise, fennel seeds and sesame seeds need breaking down as well as mixing, although I’m sure a small food processor would also do the job. I rubbed the pork shoulder liberally with the rub mix getting into all the folds and cracks and left for another two hours, during which time I got the smoker up to temperature to cook at 250°F. Once up to temperature I put the pork in the smoker using a mix of cherry and oak wood chunks to smoke the pork with.
Once the pork had been in the smoker for about 8hrs it wasn’t cooked enough to pull but had developed a nice bark and a clear smoke ring. As mentioned earlier, I then finished it in the oven overnight, again at 250°F. Once the pork was at the point where it was going to pull nicely I took it out the oven and placed it in containers to cool and chill down in the fridge. I decided not to pull the pork at this stage and instead left it as whole as possible so it could be pulled on reheating when the barbecue sauce was added.
Now I had finished cooking the pork the juices and rendered fat were able to be separated from the pork and saved, unlike usual when they just drip into the water tray under the meat. I used the juices and fat as the basis for a Korean-style barbecue sauce where I added tomato ketchup, sesame oil, soy sauce, hoi sin sauce, plum sauce, rice vinegar and honey.
The following day, when I was due to serve the Korean pulled pork to my colleagues I added the Korean-style barbecue sauce to the pork and as it heated up, this added precious flavour and moisture back into the pork as it was heating up to the point where it could be pulled properly. I also knocked up a Korean style slaw using a standard slaw recipe of white cabbage, red cabbage, carrot and mayo. However, to give it a Korean twist I added fennel, lime zest, lime juice, rice vinegar, sesame seeds and sesame oil. This was served in a bun with sriracha, chopped chillis, some kimchi and a final sprinkling of sesame seeds.
(p.s. As this was a cook for colleagues I did serve a vegetarian version too which was halloumi that was rubbed in the same Korean style rub as the pork and grilled over direct heat. Then served with the same accompaniments as the pulled pork. This was equally as good and for those who wanted pork AND halloumi, yes there were a few, it was also a great addition).
Jason Wood is an avid backyard barbecue chef, cooking almost solely on his Weber, he loves all aspects of barbecue and what it offers. This has included competing with the barbecue team ‘Tea and Briskets’ with the esteemed position of ‘parsley slave’. He completed a Masters in Business Administration in 2017 where he was awarded a distinction for his dissertation on the ‘Sustainability of the UK Barbecue Food Industry’. He runs an emergent blog on barbecue, smoking and what he likes to call ‘barbecology’, an area he aims to write more on the wider aspects of barbecue beyond just the recipes.
To find out more go to www.hopsmokefire.com or @hopsmokefire on Twitter and Instagram.
15