The Best Things in Life are Worth Waiting For…22 Hour Pulled Pork!

To celebrate Easter 2012, Heather, the kids and I invited 7 of our close friends to try our first attempt at pulled pork, a.k.a. Boston Butt, a.k.a. Singapore Swine. The result? Without exaggeration, this was the single BEST result we’ve had on the Big Green Asian Egg to date. Heather screamed out….”this is a 15 out of 10!!!!” in front of a packed house.

The secret to the success of the “Singapore Swine” was the super low and super slow approach that was employed. From start to finish, the butt was consumed ten minutes short of 22 full hours on the BGAE! I was so excited to try this out and my hat and my BBQ mits come off to Craig “Meathead” Goldwyn, the Barbecue Whisperer for his step by step guide to PERFECT pulled pork! Click here for the link! Another shout out goes to my peeps at The Butcher for carving up 4.818 kg of pork lovin’!  Jack, you’re a star!!!! For those who aren’t metrically inclined, that’s about 10.6 pounds of pork shoulder!

Right, so two days before I prepped three homemade sauces that are very worthy of being shared. Make these and if you actually combine the Lexington Dip with the Columbian Gold…you’ve got Lexington Gold which goes beautifully on a pulled pork sammich!

Sauces:

Kansas City BBQ Sauce

Ingredients

• 2 cups Heinz ketchup
• ½ cup apple cider vinegar
• ¼ cup molasses
• ½ cup honey
• ½ cup firmly packed brown sugar
• ¼ cup yellow mustard
• 2 tablespoons of your favorite BBQ rub
• 1 teaspoon Kosher salt
• ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Combine all the ingredients in a saucepan and stir until blended. Remember to use a wooden spoon. Simmer on low heat, stirring once in a while, for about 10 minutes. Makes 3 ½ cups.

Lexington Dip – North Carolina Barbecue Sauce

Yield: Makes about 1 1/2 cups.

Ingredients

• 1 cup distilled vinegar (do not use cider vinegar)
• 1/4 cup ketchup
• 1/4 cup apple juice
• 1 teaspoon hot sauce
• 3 tablespoons light brown sugar
• 1/2 tablespoon salt
• 1 teaspoon hot chili flakes
• 1 teaspoon finely ground black pepper

Heat this up for about 10 minutes until it starts to simmer….this step unlocks all sorts of crazy flavours!

Columbia Gold Barbecue Sauce Recipe

Ingredients
2 cups prepared yellow mustard
2/3 cup cider vinegar
3 tablespoons tomato paste
1/2 teaspoon chipotle Tabasco sauce or you favorite hot sauce
3/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons chicken bouillon granules or 1 cube
2 teaspoons dried rosemary leaves
1 teaspoon celery seed
3 teaspoons mustard powder
2 teaspoons onion powder
2 teaspoons garlic powder
1 teaspoon table salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Mix the wet ingredients together in a bowl - If you are using a bouillon cube, crush it with a spoon in a bowl or mortar & pestle and add it to the bowl. Crush the rosemary leaves and celery seed in a mortar & pestle or in a blender or coffee grinder and add it to the bowl. Add the rest of the dry ingredients to the bowl and mix thoroughly. Let it sit for an hour in the refrigerator for the flavors to meld. No cooking necessary. Leftovers will keep in the fridge for a month or more.

OK, the rest of it kind of goes like this…read “Meathead’s” method and remember to use the 2 hours per pound at 225 F. It works beautifully. Make sure you also stock good batteries for your digital thermometer. I have an IGrill and went through 16 AA batteries before I chucked in 4 Energizer Lithium batteries. $15 bucks well spent.  I kept one probe for ambient temperature (kept at 225 F or thereabouts) and one in the butt waiting for a magic 190 F. If you read the article and follow it precisely, you won’t be disappointed.

Thanks Heather, Alex, Kalyna, Gio, Michelle, John, Angi, David, Mayeth, Richard and Billi for a great Easter meal and sorry to the gang at work…NO LEFTOVERS!

Enjoy!

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Overall Heather Rating: 15/10

 

 

Reverse Seared Ribeye Steak

Right, so here we are, 100 posts in and what better way to celebrate this milestone with a great recipe that will challenge the most seasoned grillers?  Reverse seared ribeye steak…what pray tell does that actually mean? Traditionally grillers tend to take a steak and slap it on a searing hot grill and 6 minutes later, you’ve got a wonderfully juicy medium rare steak that honestly taste pretty damn good. I came across a theory that talks about the wonderfully crunchy and tasty sear marks that are usually found on steaks however, the theory adds the critical question of why not have the entire steak surface turn into a tasty, crusty bark that keeps your taste buds flipping upside-down with every bite.

You can find this wonderful article here: http://amazingribs.com/recipes/beef/steakhouse_steaks.html - Thank you Meathead for sharing this incredible recipe and method of producing what can only be described as the BEST STEAK we’ve every grilled.

I won’t take credit for the method but I can corroborate the success of it all. Read the post above and give it a go. I will say that the timing on the low and slow portion of the cook was a lot shorter than 30 minutes. Trust your instincts along with a good digital thermometer. The searing bit…at the end of the grilling was a lot of fun and produced an incredibly tasty result. I also served the steaks with some leftover shitake/sake sauce that we used in this blog entry http://biggreenasianegg.wordpress.com/2011/07/07/smoked-threadfin-ikan-kurau-in-sake-sauce/- the sauce worked perfectly with steak though I do confess, my second helping consisted of only naked beef and it was equally delicious, if not a bit better!

We served two huge ribeye steaks cut into 4 portions with some steamed sweetcorn, baked potato and garlic fried spinach. Very happy family and a huge score for the hundredth blog entry on the Big Green Asian Egg site.

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Overall Heather Rating: 10/10