Mexican Pulled Pork

This is one of my favorite recipes.  It is based on a Carnitas recipe by America's Test Kitchen.  Carnitas are traditionally deep fried over a long period of time.  The America's test kitchen has a novel approach to replicating this by brazing the pork in a flavorful liquid until the fat has rendered out and the pork can be shredded, reducing the brazing liquid down to concentrate the flavors, and then crisping the meat up under the broiler with the brazing liquid used as a glaze.  

I've probably made this half a dozen times.  I've made some changes to it and the ATK recipe is hidden behind a paywall so I thought I'd document it here.

One of my favorite things about the recipe is that it is very good as a meal prepared in advance.  I freeze 1 meal portions of the meat (about 2 lbs worth).  To prepare the meal I just thaw them during the day we'll eat them and just have to perform the final, broiler crisping, step that evening.  The meat comes out as good as the day it was prepared this way.

With this in mind I've purchased a 16.5 lb pork shoulder butt to prepare several meals worth of Mexican pulled pork

Ingredients:

• 16.5 lb Pork Shoulder Butt

• 1 Bunch of Garlic - peeled and crushed
• 3 Small Onion - halved
• 2 Oranges - halved
• Juice of 3 limes
• 1 Cup Apple Cider Vinegar
• 2 7oz Cans Green Chillies
• 3 tsp Salt
• 3 tsp Oragano
• 3 tsp Cumin
• 2 tsp Black Pepper
• 1 tsp Crushed Red Pepper Flakes
• 3 Bay Leaves
• 4 Cups of Water (to cover the meat)

Process Details:

• 12/17/22:
• Cut my meat up into 2-3 inch square blocks.  Wasn't at all careful about this cutting step.  I did remove some of the biggest pockets of fat but left a lot of it in since the rendered fat is used to provide a fried character when the sauce is used as a glaze during the final broiler step

• Moved the meat to a large pot (5 gal in my case) and then added the other ingredients to it

• Pre-heated the oven to 300 F
• Brought the pot to a boil on the stove top
• Covered the pot with aluminum foil to minimize evaporation of the liquid at this step

Lid is upside down here because it wouldn't fit into the oven otherwise

• Moved the pot to the oven and ended up cooking it for 6 hours (3 hrs would probably have been enough but 6 hrs had no ill effect)
• Confirmed the mead was easily shredable with two forks and then moved it to another container while next steps were performed

• Scooped out all the other solids and threw them away

• Boiled the remaining liquid until it was reduced by about 50-75% (maybe 3/4 a gal left).  This is a step I feel could use some refinement

• Tasted the reduced brazing liquid and decided to add 2 more tsp of salt
• Put 2 lbs of meat, shredded into "bite sized" pieces, on a roasting pan lined with foil and poured 1/2 cup of the glaze over the meat

• Put the meat under the broiler, at the top slot of the oven, for a couple minutes and then flipped.  Repeated the process a couple times.
• Added another half cup of the glaze over the meat, did a bit more shredding, and then broiled for a couple more cycles until the meat had a nice crispy outside on all sides.  You have to get a feel for this as more time under the broiler makes the meat better but if you take it too far the meat will become dried out.  I'm thinking a third or fourth round of glazing could have improved the meat further.  Having a better feel for how much of the glazing liquid will be available for the leftovers is a tricky thing.

• The meat is now ready to be served.  We made taco with cilantro, red onion, avocado and lime.  The meat was very good.  Ended up with about half as leftovers which I ate over the next couple days

• Separated out the meat into 3 2 lb servings each in a freezer bag.  Saved off the remaining liquid into another gallon freezer bag.  Got a bit less than half a gal of liquid (although did spill a good amount which was heartbreaking).
• Moved the leftovers to the freezer to but eaten later

Updated Recipe - 12/26/23:

This is a large batch of pulled pork which should provide many easy week night meals for us.  I'm going for something very similar to what we made last time but am going to salt a bit more aggressively up front (am going to try adding 0.6% salt per weight of the meet.  I'm also changing up the spicing levels slightly and adding Chipotle Peppers which will give a bit of spice and the nice smokey flavor

Ingredients:

• 21.8 lbs of Pork (this is pretty close to 3 pork sholders)
• 59 g of Kosher Salt (this is 0.6% of 9888g of meat)
• 1 pork shoulder bone roasted at 425 for 45 min (completely option but used since I had it)
• 3 cups Apple Cider Vinegar
• 1.5 tbs Cumin powder
• 1.5 tbs Oragano Leaf
• 1.5 tbs Garlic Powder
• 1.5 tbs Black Pepper
• 1.5 tbs Green Chile Powder
• 3 bay leaves
• 7 oz can of Chipotle Pepper
• 3 oranges halved and juiced
• 3 onions halved
• 4 cups of unsalted beef stock which was just about enough to cover the meat

Process Details:

• Mixed the ingredients

• Heated up to a boil on the stove top
• Cooked in the oven at 250 F - let it go for about 8 hrs and it was fork tender

• Removed the meat from the pot and gave it an initial shred.  Discarded the other solids
• Reduced the sauce from maybe 1.5 gal to 8 cups on the stove top

• Prepared a 2 lb portion of the meat that night and used 2 cups of the reducing liquid for the glaze
• Prepared 7 1.5 bags of leftover meat.  Moved the meat and the 8 cups of sauce to the freezer for use later.  This will be 1 cup of the concentrated sauce per meal

Results:

• I think the salt level in this one was very good - definitely not too much and pretty much enough
• The Chipotle peppers add a nice flavor and a bit of heat but I think the recipe is just as good without them (might try something different next time)
• I was pleased with the large amount of leftover we got from this.  Cooking a 20 lb batch isn't really any more work than a 7 lb batch.  I think I'll do this again next time.  Also happy to be getting a better grip on how to manage the glazing liquid with this batch

Updated Recipe -5/31/24

We ate all the pulled pork from December (every couple weeks we'd have pulled pork taco).  For this next batch I decided to cook roughly the same amount and to increase the spices a bit for some extra flavor.  I got 4 boneless pork shoulders for this batch and removed the coppa from them for another cured meat project.  The remaining meat (24 lbs) is used in this disk

Ingredients:

• 11100g of Pork Shoulder
• 111 g of Kosher Salt (this is 1% salt (up from 0.6% last time)
• 3 cups Apple Cider Vinegar
• 2 tbs Cumin powder
• 2 tbs Oragano Leaf
• 2 tbs Garlic Powder
• 2 tbs Black Pepper
• 2 tbs Green Chile Powder
• 4 oranges halved and juiced
• 4 onions halved
• 4 cups of unsalted beef stock which was enough to cover the meat

Process Details:

• Cooked the meat at 150 F over night and then raised to 225 F for 4 more hour in the morning
• Removed the meat once easily shredable and set aside in chunks to be shredded at serving time
• Divided the meat into 1.5 lb servings in Ziplock bags - got 9 bags of meat (we didn't make a meal of the pork on cooking day this time)
• Reduced the cooking liquid down to 9 cups (or rather 8 cups and then added a cup of water to it).  Put this into a large Ziplock back
• Froze the meat and sauce

Results:

• The meat itself tastes about the same as always but the sauce seems quite a bit more flavorful with the extra spices.  I think it's going to be good