The Ultimate Pulled Pork Recipe
To make a good pulled pork sandwich, you need to have some pulled pork. Duh. It's the stuff that barbecues, meat sweats, and dreams are made of. Here is Duck's Eatery's very own recipe created by chef and owner Will Horowitz -- so get off of your butt, start simmering some sumptuous porky goodness, and you can start making sandwiches... or just eating it straight from the smoker like we all secretly want to.
The Ultimate Pulled Pork Recipe
Ingredients:
- Two 5 pound pork butts, cleaned
- 2 cups brown sugar
- 4 cups kosher salt
- 1 cup dark maple syrup
- ¼ cup soy sauce
- ¼ cup fish sauce
- 1 cup apple cider vinegar
- 2 gallon of water
- 2 tbsp. of Dijon
- 2 tsp. cayenne
Directions to cook in oven:
- In large container whisk together brown sugar, kosher salt, soy sauce, fish sauce, and water. Heat up in a pot until the sugar is diluted, then cool down. Place both pork butts in water, completely submerged for 14 hours to 24 hours.
- Remove pork from brine, rinse, and allow to air dry for 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Place pork on roasting rack and into oven, uncovered. Mix together the Dijon mustard, ½ cup maple and cayenne in a small bowl.
- After 30 minutes use this to baste or brush pork shoulder. Keep doing this every 30 minutes for 1 ½ hours or until shoulders are nice and evenly dark golden brown.
Remove from oven and drizzle remaining basting liquid over pork as you wrap completely in tin foil. Lower heat on oven to 250 degrees and place wrapped pork back in oven covered. Cook for 3 ½ more hours or until fork tender. Allow pork to rest, wrapped still for 30 minutes before serving!
Directions to smoke:
- In large container whisk together brown sugar, kosher salt, soy sauce, fish sauce, and water. Heat up in pot until sugar is diluted then cool down. Place both pork butts in water, completely submerged for 14 hours to 24 hours.
- Remove from brine, rinse and allow to air dry in fridge for 6-8 hours. Then heat BBQ smoker using your favorite smoking wood (we use oak & maple) to 225.
- Mix together the Dijon mustard, ½ cup maple & cayenne. 2. Paint mixture onto pork butts and place them into smoker. In a squeeze bottle mix remaining maple and all of cider vinegar. Use this to spray pork shoulder every hour.
- Smoke pork for 4 hours at 225, then raise temperature to 280 after one hour, remove and wrap in tin foil. Once, wrapped there is no need to spray anymore. Place back into smoker, lower temp to 250 and cook for 4 hours or until fork tender. Allow, to rest for 30 minutes before serving.