Garlic Pulled Pork
Search through a few cookbooks or food blogs for a pulled pork recipe and you’ll find that everyone has a slightly different approach. Some cooks add broth and tomatoes, some sear the meat at the beginning, some cook the pork in a crock pot and others go all-out with a charcoal grill. Each cook will claim their recipe is the best, but we’ll let you in on a secret: no matter how you cook pulled pork, it’s going to be delicious.
We like the approach Pat “Allbeef Patty” Levine submitted for the Primal Blueprint Cookbook Challenge because it’s straightforward and fool-proof and still has tons of flavor. As Pat told us, “the beauty is that it’s very affordable and it’s more of a “method” than a recipe” – which means you can alter the seasonings to your own taste. The method Pat speaks of is slow-cooking at a low temperature. Low and Slow is the best way to cook less-expensive, tough cuts of meat. One of these cuts is pork shoulder, which is sold most often as either a Boston Butt (upper shoulder) or Picnic (lower shoulder). Either will work for this recipe.
A pork shoulder is very forgiving. Contrary to most cuts of meat, this one will only come out tough if you undercook it. Think of it this way: the meat is so tough to begin with that you really can’t make it worse, you can only improve on it. You’ll be helped along by a thick layer of fat that covers the pork shoulder, tenderizing and flavoring the meat as it cooks. All you need to do is add some seasonings, put the meat in a dish, cover it with foil and walk away for three hours. If the meat doesn’t shred easily with a slight nudge from a fork, then cook it another hour. After four hours in the oven, the meat will have transformed into a succulent, richly flavored, melt-in-your-mouth roast.
As the pork is cooking it will release it’s own juices, creating a sauce in the pan. This sauce can be drizzled over the shredded meat at the end, adding even more flavor. Another reason we like Pat’s method of using an oven instead of a crock pot is that you can take the foil off for the last 45 minutes and the meat will get crispy and caramelized on the outside. Trust us, you won’t be able to resist picking these crispy bits off the top when the pork comes out of the oven.
This is the type of dish that gives you a lot of bang for the buck: tons of lip-smacking flavor and enough meat for several meals (or a very large family.)
Ingredients:
- 1 pork shoulder cut (butt or picnic), weighing 3-4 pounds
- 1-2 tablespoons kosher salt
- 1/2 teaspoon cumin
- 1 teaspoon of black pepper
- 1-2 tablespoons of granulated garlic or garlic powder
- optional: 6 fresh garlic cloves, peeled
- The juice of one lime (or sour orange, if you can get one)
- 1 onion
- 1 bay leaf
Instructions:
Mix together salt, cumin, black pepper and granulated garlic.
Juice the lime over the seasonings and rub the mixture all over the pork.
If you love garlic as much as Pat does, you might want to use fresh garlic, too. Use a knife to slice six thin cuts in the pork and push each clove securely inside each cut. You don’t want the fresh garlic to fall out and touch the cooking vessel or it will burn and affect the flavor of the meat.
The meat should sit out of refrigeration a half hour before you put it in the oven. This ensures that it will cook evenly throughout. If you want to let the meat marinate in the rub longer than this, put it in the fridge for an hour or even overnight.
When you’re ready to cook, preheat the oven to 250 degrees Fahrenheit. Place the roast in a pan with one sliced onion and a bay leaf. Cover and roast for three to four hours, or until the middle of the roast reads about 190 degrees and falls apart easily when pulled with a fork.
Let the roast rest for twenty minutes or so, then uncover. You’ll notice a lot of liquid at the bottom. Use it as a sauce for the meat, which you will now viciously attack with two forks. It’ll fall apart pretty readily, and you’ll get the idea of the shredding method after a couple of pulls. Enjoy!
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Posted By: Worker Bee
Made this yesterday for friends that came over for dinner. WOW!!!!!!! Other than bacon, I have not eaten pork in 10+ years…this was AMAZING! I followed the recipe to a T, including all the cloves of garlic inserted deep down inside to make it that much more delicious! THANK YOU for this recipe…it will definitely be a “multiple-times-a-month” meal!!!
I made this recipe a few weeks ago…it was great except I found it to be a bit salty (yeah I used the upper limit of salt…2 TBS since my pork cut was larger than the recipe called for) so next time I make it I will definitely cut the salt back by at least half. Other than that this was awesome!
It really depends on the size of the grains of salt. Some Kosher salts are very coarse, so two TBSPs of a coarse salt is probably more like one of a fine salt.
I used the kosher large granule sized salt….I will make it again and see what happens with half the amt of salt.
So I made this..
It turned out OK but I think my meat was way to fatty.
I think I could have used more time as well.
I made this last night and while the rub was delicious and the meat was sooo good, it was not easily shreddable. We used a pork rump roast rather than shoulder. Is this the problem or was something else going on?
I made this today and my husband is presently slurping it up like there’s no tomorrow! We used lemon, no lime, and a steak rub I got on clearance (with garlic, pepper and salt) instead of the suggested spices. Crazy easy and delicious! Thank you!
i have been lurking here on the site a bit stealing recipes but I have never posted. I feel compelled to post about this because while the meat was delicious- it certaibly did not shred. i followed the recipe exactly… don’t know what went wrong.
Ginger with the garlic or even swapping out the garlic is great as well with this recipe. If it didn’t turn out right, it was probably took it out too soon. With the size that I roast at and my oven, I usually cook it nine hours.
I made something similar to this the other day except I took a pork loin, poked a bunch of holes in it with a knife and stuffed it with about 150-20 cloves of garlic. Rolled it in a bit of salt, pepper, sage, paprika and placed it in a crock pot with a bit of chicken broth. Let it cook on low for 12 hrs and the garlic was so soft you could mash it like butter. Delish!
I’m usually not a fan of pork…but this looks so good.
Made this last night with the 6 cloves of fresh garlic and the garlic powder and it was fantastic!! I will definately make this again. I can’t believe someone thought it was bland, it was far from bland.
I cooked this for 5 hours @ 250. The outside was nicely browned, but the inside was quite soft and gelatinous–was it supposed to be like that?? If it was undercooked–it would be all tough, right?
I left the pot o’ juices on the counter overnight–and there’s an inch of congealed fat in there now. Should I save that (like I do the bacon grease) and use it to cook with?
Just finished making this and it’s amazing! I forgot the lime juice, but it’s still wonderful. So glad I made 8lbs instead of 4lbs. This will be great to pull out of the freezer on a busy day, reheat & throw on a salad with some avocado and tomatoes. My kids loved it too, so I’m calling it a big win!
I am making this one day next week for dinner (it will last several days as there are only 2 of us). I had only written down ‘shoulder’ or ‘butt’ on my grocery list so when I saw ‘pork shoulder, boston roast’ at the meat counter, I asked the meat guy if that would be good for pulled pork. He said, “I think it would be too fatty”. I was like, “really?” and put it in my basket. Primal thinking
OMFG, SO GOOD!!
I took the liquid that was left in the pan and added some arrowroot to thicken it, then tossed the pulled pork back in. AMAZING!!!
Actually in the middle of cooking this right now. having problems though. it’s been in the oven for 4 hours now and it’s not cooked through yet. I pulled it out at about 3.5 hours thinking it would be done, cut the netting off and it would not shred at all. I stuck the thermometer in it and it only reached 150. Not sure how much longer it will ned to cook or if it will reach the point where I can shred it or not.
I had the same problem. I ended up sticking it in the crock pot overnight on low. It was falling apart by morning. It was delicious, just took longer to cook than expected.
We cooked ours for about 4.5 hours and the temp was only up to 165. Going to try throwing it in the crockpot on low overnight and see how it turns out…
After reading the recipe and all the comments, I have so many questions: bone-in or boneless? With liquid in the pan or without? In a shallow casserole dish (as pictured) or in Dutch oven with a tight-fitting lid? I just checked my boneless shoulder at 3 hours and there was no liquid in the dish yet and the onions were drying out.
This recipe is so good I’m making it again..slow roasting aromas filling my place all day long
Make sure you get a roast with fat on it; this will give you the juice you are hearing about. Start early in the day so you have plenty of time to roast for 4 or 5 hours.
Making this is way better than the frozen pizza my peers at college are eating. Hahaha! Thanks Mark.