With these last few posts on cooking for groups, it occurred to me that I should post one of my go-to, fabulously easy, always-gets-raves main course that serves a lot of people. East Carolina barbecue, called pulled pork here up north.
When I arrived at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, from Cleveland, Ohio, in the 1980s I knew the word barbecue to be a verb. You did it on a grill. As a noun, it meant a gathering to eat food cooked on a grill—it was something you invited neighbors to.
But on the drive back from a place called Jugtown (to get there we’d gone through a town called Whynot, with a church named after the town; loved that), we stopped at what looked like an actual shack in the woods, billowing smoke, and had the most amazing true-blue unbelievable Carolina barbecue. I remember asking, “It’s just called barbecue?” I’d never had anything like it. It marked my introduction to the glories of the pig. I’d grown up with pork chops, pork roast (with Lipton dried onion soup on top), and spareribs, but barbecue was a revelation. Sweet, sour, porky, smoky, giving a pleasure that made my spine hum.
It wasn’t till years later when friends made a version of it that I thought to develop my own, or really just read a few traditional recipes and create a version that is as close to what I ate and still eat when I return to North Carolina. (Not many traditional recipes call for fish sauce.)
But it’s true to East Carolina barbecue traditional: vinegar, sugar, red chilli flakes, mixed with pork that’s cooked low and slow till it pulls apart between two forks. (Go west, go south and barbecue morphs into a whole other dish).
The following recipe should be enough sauce for a 5-pound bone-in skin-on pork shoulder. How you cook it is your business. Ideally, sear it hard over coals in the Weber, covered for 20 to 30 minutes, then put it in a Dutch oven, covered, for 6 hours at 250 degrees (or 4 hours at 300˚F). I think smoke is critical, but if you want to make it super easy on yourself, put the raw shoulder in a Dutch oven and roast it covered at 225 overnight and that’ll do the trick as well. Stir in the sauce. Taste for seasoning—salt, sweetness, acidity,heat. Adjust as you wish.
Having a superbowl party? A family reunion? This is a fabulous thing to prepare. It gets better the next day, so you can make it a day ahead and reheat. A five pound shoulder will feed 20 people.
East Carolina BBQ Sauce
Ingredients
- 1 cup cider vinegar
- ¼ cup brown sugar
- 1 tbsp red pepper flakes
- 1 tbsp fish sauce or soy sauce (this is not traditional)
- kosher salt to taste
- one 3-5 lb pork shoulder, cooked (see note below)
Instructions
- Combine all ingredients in a small sauce pan. Bring to a simmer, stir and remove from the heat.
- Add to cooked shredded pork as needed.
Notes
Want to read more on the history of Carolina barbecue, this is an excellent history, Flavored By Time. One of the best barbecue books I’ve come across recently, and this, while it’s heavily weighted in Texas Barbecue, it’s a good book Peace, Love and Barbecue.
Joel Finkle
Ideally grill then dutch oven?
Please try using a smoker, it's an eye-opener. Yes, it's time-consuming, but most of it is just hanging around in the vicinity leaving it the heck alone.
I strongly recommend Gary Wiviott's Low and Slow (and Low and Slow II) as a primer.
The results are amazing, it's what we're evolved to eat: meat cooked slowly over smoldering coals.
Michael Ruhlman
yes grill then dutch oven covered.
Allen
I’ve got an old empty Stone Brewery Enjoy By 6 pack - my fav, that I keep my bbq sauces in plain squeeze bottles.
I have another version of vinegar based E. Carolina bbq sauce, I’ll make be making yours to put in there right next to it.
I have a spicy chipotle, a smokey maple, a E. Carolina and a bottle of Frank’s. and sometimes a blueberry bbq sauce from N. Carolina.
This will be right at home there.
Thank you!
Dr. Matt Wachsman, MD PhD
Anytime you want to co write another cooking book just gimme an email.
I love your ratio book. AND there's another sequel to it from material/pharmacologic science.
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Material science has found the perfect ratio for cement. This underlies stacking methadone vials, crab cakes, chocolate chip cookies and many many other applications.
Everything that applies to addicts applies to each of us so this has to make for really good food dishes.
AND related to that is that the parts of the brain involved with addiction take in all internal and external sensory inputs--obviously all of those involved in enjoyment of food--these parts process, distort, store, and respond emotionally, cognitively, and physically, and physiologically at 10 times the speed of anything under volitional control. These processes are run by chemical signals that are, tautologically, drugs of abuse. Wackiness ensues. This is obviously the basis of cuisine.
Did you know we do just about everything with Chinese Cooking wrong starting with we view the individual as the unit of society.?
Also, from my experiments in Mad Science....
Second law of thermodynamics is entropy inherently means random flows of energy cannot be used for useful work. And how to use random energy for useful work.
Oil and water don't mix and how every way to mix them really helps in cooking.
Why Mad Scientists are inexorably attracted to dry ice and how this one used it in many recipes.
Jeff the Chef @ Make It Like a Man!
What an interesting bbq. I've never made anything like it.