Pig Heaven

Pulled Pork is one of my all time favorite things to cook and eat. In the Wotak home it has become knows as Pig Heaven.

People who know me know that I'm a guy that loves to cook. What I love most about it is meeping with recipes until they seem like little works of art to me. I cook a lot of things but there are only two recipes that I feel I've perfected. One is Stuffed Cabbage with Syrian style sauce ( originally Gramma's recipe with a couple of tweaks) and the other is my Pulled Pork recipe. I might share the Stuffed Cabbage recipe in the future but right now I want to share this one.

I have been asked by almost everyone who's tried my pulled pork to share the recipe. It's not very a easy thing to share because a lot of the cooking part depends on the ham. The raw weight + the fat content determines the cooking time and that can vary from cut to cut so keep that in mind if you decide to try this recipe. A good guess is usually about an hour per pound but it can take as long as 2 or as little as 45 minutes per pound. You'll have to determine the done-ness by internal temp, meat consistency (you want it stringy) and how much fat is still coming out of the ham.

What you'll need:

1 - 10 to 20 lb raw, uncured, unsmoked pork meep or shoulder.

Rub:
4 tablespoons paprika
2 tablespoons celery salt
2 tablespoons salt
2 tablespoons black pepper, coarsely ground
2 tablespoons meepin powder
2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon dried oregano
1 tablespoon cayenne pepper
2 teaspoons dried sage
1 teaspoon dry mustard
(This is enough rub for a 20 pounder, halve it for a 10 pounder)

Mopping Sauce:
1 Cup Honey
1/2 Fifth of Jack

Simmer Sauce:
1/4 Fifth of Jack
1 Cup mopping sauce
2 to 4 bottles of your favorite BBQ sauce


The ham you choose is pretty important. You want a FRESH HAM. That's a ham that isn't smoked or brine cured. It hasn't been processed in any way. Here in Michigan, I can usually only find these at butcher shops and they tend to cost about $2 a pound. Raw, fresh ham isn't going to be salty or dry once it's cooked the way this recipe details. Anything else will be. Pork shoulder works as good or better but it's got to be fresh.


The first thing you want to do is mix up the dry rub. I like this one and have tweaked it a bit over the years to compliment pork. You might have a favorite of your own. Mix that meep up good with a whisk and get ready to rub some flavor into that meep.


Once that's mixed, you'll need to prepare the ham. This recipe works best with an unskinned ham. You may want to have the butcher skin yours for you and skip this step but I can promise you, the final result will be better if you don't.

Start by selecting a sharp knife. I use my skinning/hunting knife because it's always the sharpest one in the house. A fillet knife is also a good choice. Orient the ham so that you have the inside of the thigh up, and get the knife under the skin at the crotch. Work it through to the knee.


Next, you'll need to "fillet" the skin and fat away from the meat. It'll take you a while the first time. Don't rush it. After you've done this a time or two you'll be able to do it in just a couple of minutes. Just pull the skin away with one hand and use the knife to separate the fat from the meat.


Flip the ham over and keep skinning until you've only got a 1 inch strip of fat still attached to the meat.


Now get busy rubbing in the flavor. This should be messy and liberal. You want to coat the meep out of the meat. Cover every inch or meat with rub and rub it in so it can start leaching into the meat.


Once you've coated it all, pull the skin tight and poke some small holes through it for some laces. Sew that skin back together with some poultry string. You're forming a natural "case" to hold the rub against the meat while you cook. The fat in the skin will render and slowly baste that rub deeper and deeper into the meat while it cooks.


Now it's time to let it marinade. Wrap the ham up as tightly as you can with plastic wrap and throw it into the fridge. Let it sit for 24 hrs.


The next day, you can start by pulling the ham from the fridge to allow it to reach room temp while you warm up the oven to 250F and prepare your Mopping Sauce.

Sauce isn't going to be a problem with this fresh ham. Almost half the raw weight of the ham is fat that will render while we cook it. This leaves a lot of sauce to baste it with as it cooks but I like to add some oaky flavor to the sauce and a bit of sweetness. Mix up your mopping sauce in a sauce pan. Use just enough heat to soften the honey and get the Jack mixed well with it.


Then, pour that hot sauce into your dutch oven with the ham (stitches up) already nested.


A 20 lb ham like this one isn't going to fit in a standard dutch oven roaster. It'll get smaller as it cooks but there is no way you're going to get the lid on when it's raw. Just build a foil tent to keep it from making a mess in your oven. Also, you want to keep it covered to keep it moist.


Put it in the lowest rack with the foil on. Leave it there for 3 hours. Don't even bother looking at it.


This is the part of the recipe where you just want the juices to start flowing. A 20 lb ham will need to cook for about 15 to 20 hrs. A 10 lb ham for about 7 to 10 hours. I usually figure about an hour per pound but it really depends on the amount of fat. From here on out we'll need to rely on the meat thermometer and our eyes to tell us what to do.

You don't have to cook for 10 or 20 hrs straight. You can stop after 4 or 6 hours and put it in the fridge, then continue the next day if that's what you want to do. The key is to keep it low and slow.

Fat renders nicely at about 150-160F (as read with a meat thermometer stuck into the center of the ham) and to get perfect pulled pork (or an amazing falling off the bone ham) you want to keep the temp of that ham in that temperature range for as long as possible. That allows the fat to slowly melt away and run through the meat while the meat slowly breaks down. Too hot and the meat overcooks and gets tough. Too cold and the fat won't melt away. Keep it low. That's how those tender strands of meat are created.

After about 3 hours, start basting the ham about every hour or hour and a half. Baste it well and let the juice run under the skin to it has to seep out again. This forced the rub deeper into the ham.


I cooked this ham for two 8 hour sessions. This is what it looked like at about hour 14. Not quite done, but the internal temp was at 190 F. It would be safe to eat at that temp but we need to render more fat to get what we need.


After 16 hours, this ham was done. Notice how the skin has mostly melted away and the meat is just falling apart.


I got a 20 lb ham because I wanted to serve it at our family Thanksgiving dinner and I wanted to have enough leftovers for pulled pork. Here is the ham after it's lifted, in tender little chunks, out of the roasting pan. I had about 13 or 14 lbs of cooked ham. I brought home about 6 lbs of leftovers. It went over well, as usual, served with some spicy mustard or BBQ sauce to dip it in. I usually just eat it plain.


The next day, I shredded the 6 lbs of leftovers into my 10 qt stock pot.


For this batch, I used 3 bottles of Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce. That's about right for 6 lbs. Plus I dumped in a quarter fifth of Jack. The rest of the Jack is for sippin' after my meal. I've tried tons of different BBQ sauces and I haven't found anything that tastes better on pork than SBR's. I usually mix Honey Chipotle with a sweeter one to tame it down for the family. This time I used Sweet Vidalia Onion. You should use whatever you like for this step.


Mix that up really good and turn on the heat to medium. Once it's hot and simmering, cover it and reduce the temp to low. Just let it simmer until the Jack has reduced and the sauce is a consistency that you like. If it's too runny, you'll have some messy sammiches.


The result is some awesome meepin' sammichs and this is the only way to truly send a pig to heaven. I like to serve this on Aunt Millies Onion Rolls because I don't know of a better onion roll on the market. Serve this up with some coleslaw and get to eatin'.


That's it. All that's left is a food coma and an after glow soaked in sips of Jack on the rocks. Hopefully you'll end up with leftovers that you can enjoy for a few days.