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Recipe: carolina-style pulled pork

I wrote about pulled pork earlier this year during my Summer of Barbecue, but I never gave a recipe for it. Barbecue is regional in the US. Heck, my MIL just told me last weekend that barbecue in Memphis differs from barbecue in the rest of Tennessee! The varieties could make your head spin and your colon tremble: sweet, spicy, vinegar-base, tomato-base, thick, thin, beef, pork, ribs, pulled, sliced, smoked, and don’t forget the hot-links. I like them all, really. But in southern Virginia, we get a heavy influence from North Carolina and so tonight I paid homage to Carolina pulled pork for dinner.

One of my favorite acts in cooking is the Magic Act, where you take cheap cut of meat and cook it forever, whether by dry or moist heat, and render it a tender heap of Culinary Nirvana. Since we’re talking Carolina barbecue, you automatically know it is 1) pork and 2) vinegar-based sauce. And if you didn’t know, it’s about time you learned. An excellent part of the beloved piggy (besides the belly and the leg) is the shoulder, aka butt, Boston butt, Boston roast, shoulder blade roast. It is a favorite for barbecue (and also of Chinese cooking!) for its wonderful flavor, marbling, tenderness, moistness, and low cost. The trick is low and slow heat.

I tend to believe that authentic barbecue is smoked over coals for hours on end. I could do that where I live, but then I might burn down the entire National Forest, so I slow cook in the oven. It’s a more practical approach.

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Oh boy, I found the right butcher at Safeway to score me some beef short ribs cut flanken style. There is a big difference between the back ribs from last time and the wonderful ribs I got this time. I hurried and marinated korean bbq short ribs (galbi) so that we could grill them up before a cold spell blasts through. Even tastier than the first try, although I will omit the water next time and see if the flavor intensifies. I think I am addicted to these ribs!

Recipe: galbi (bbq korean short ribs)

I am a barbecue whore. I think it originates in part from my southern roots – growing up in southeastern Virginia you end up loving seafood, barbecue, white trash food, and good country ham among other heart-stopping delights. I also love Asian food because I grew up in a household run by Chinese immigrants (my parents and my grandma) who all three are fantabulous cooks. This summer has been my summer of bbq (and pastries, and whatever else I feel like trying to cook). When I declared the Summer of BBQ, I meant I wanted to get my bearings straight on the King of BBQ (pork – according to where I grew up) and its loyal subjects beef, and chicken. But… Sarah Gim piqued my interest in galbi (or galbee), that is, Korean bbq short ribs on one of her posts.

It sounded so good. I had to try it when my List of Recipes to Attempt and Master cleared out a bit. And so it was that earlier this week while grocery shopping in Boulder I met my first obstacle… that no one in Boulder knows what short ribs (according to the Korean style) are. Safeway’s “I don’t normally work this department” butcher led me to something that looked nothing like what I sought. In Whole Foods, I was pointed to beef back ribs which had a lot of bone and fat and not so much meat. Where the hell were all the beef rib racks? At least the butchers at Whole Foods are willing to do just about anything you ask. So I handed the fellow five pounds of the meatiest back ribs I could find in the case and asked him to please cut them across the bones. I got a funny look, but he obliged me. I should have asked him to cut each piece into 3 strips instead of 2, but I have issues with shouting to someone while they are operating a bone saw.

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