Barbeque Pulled Pork

At the farmer's market last week, I bought a 2.6 lb pork shoulder in anticipation of making pulled pork.  Prairie Pride Farms also makes their own pulled pork, which I have bought before and is amazing, but this time I wanted to try my own.  I had heard from a friend (thanks Sami!) that pulled pork is very easy to make in the crock pot: just cook whatever cut of pork in water for several hours, drain, pull meat apart with two forks, then mix with barbeque sauce.  (Why does Mozilla insist that "barbeque" be spelled "barbecue"?  Wikipedia says both are acceptable.  Hmph.)  Sounds fun.

Here's the pork shoulder, wrapped, in the sink.

I had read somewhere online that instead of just water in the crock pot, you should use water and vinegar in a 2-to-1 ratio.  I added a little apple cider vinegar, but didn't come close to that ratio, as well as some kosher salt. Here's the uncooked pork in the pot:

See my nice crock pot liner?  I love these things-- they make cleanup SO easy!

So then I left it there for about 7 hours on high, during which time I made barbeque sauce and forgot to take pictures or record my ingredients.  But it was basically a bunch of ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, a little apple cider vinegar, honey, cumin, garlic salt, and cayenne pepper, with some cornstarch/water paste to thicken it up a little.  If you're looking to make your own BBQ sauce, I wouldn't worry about following a recipe, just add stuff you think would taste good and keep tasting it along the way until you like it.

When the pork was ready to come out and be pulled, I forgot I was going to blog about it, and so there are no pictures.  Alas.  Anyway, what I did was took out the pork (which fell apart, of course) and put it on a big plate.  Before I pulled the meat apart, I tried to separate the big chunks of fat and connective tissue, because no one wants those in their sandwich.  I saved the fat on a separate plate.

Once the pork was separated and pulled, I poured the cooking liquid into a my stock pot, added the fat and half of a large onion, cut into quarters, and started it on the stove for pork stock.  If I'd had some carrots and celery, I would have put them in also, but since I didn't, this will have to do.

Pretend you can't see how messy my stove is.  Focus on the pretty stock!

I put the pulled pork back in the crock pot, poured the barbeque sauce over it, and mixed it around.  I turned the heat setting down to "Warm", since I didn't want to cook anything, just heat up the sauce and let the flavors, as they say, "meld".  Here's the finished product:

I apologize for the awkward angle on this photo.

Now it's 6:06 pm, and I have just realized that I have no bread or rolls on which to serve pulled pork sandwiches.  Oh dear.  Maybe I'll do some mashed potatoes on the side instead.

Grade: A+.  Will definitely make again.