Restaurant Secrets For Perfect Pulled Pork

Hey, what's up? Today, I'm gonna show you guys a really special restaurant recipe for slow-roasted pork called melted pork. When I was a sous-chef, this pork recipe basically won the restaurant that I was working in a James Beard award, and surprisingly, for you guys, it's actually super easy to recreate at home. In this video, I'm gonna show you the easiest ways I know to smoke meats at home, how to cook the moistest, most succulent pork every single time, and three classic ways to turn all that delicious pork meat into a meal. To get started, I'll grab seven to eight pounds of bone-in pork butt. I prefer the butt over the lower part of the shoulder or the picnic ham because it's fattier and the fat that it has is more evenly marbled throughout the muscle. Now, to season this up, I need to make what we call in the restaurant green salt. For that, I'll combine 200 grams of salt, 200 grams of sugar, then 50 grams of garlic, which I just smooshed through my garlic press because I need it pretty finely broken down. Lastly, I'll add in five to eight grams of chopped thyme. To prep this, I needed to remove the thyme leaves from the stems, and to do that, I just pinch with one hand and pull the stem out with the other hand. Next, I'll just run my knife through the leaves to open up the thyme's flavor and to make it small so it sticks to the meat better. Okay, once the herb and garlic are in the salt and sugar, I'm just gonna stir everything together until the two are evenly spread throughout. And that's green salt. It's a powerful dry brine that makes all meats taste dope. I like to use it for larger cuts like whole chickens, whole fillets of salmon, or chuck roasts. Now, to put this green salt to work, I'm gonna rub pretty much all of it into this pork shoulder and once I've got about a quarter cup spread out, I'm gonna then massage it into the meat to kind of macerate the salt and sugar. This kind of dissolves them and it makes them stick to the meat a lot better. Now, another quarter cup goes onto the back side and I will lovingly massage it into the meat. And if you're thinking, hey Bri, that's a lot of salt, well, this is a lot of meat and most of it's on the inside, which means it's not gonna get touched by the salt. So we kind of need to overcompensate. And once this butt is sparkling with green salt, I'm gonna move it over to the fridge to cure uncovered for at least two, but preferably 24 hours. Real quick, I just want to mention that it really helps to get this pork cured the day before you cook it because the longer the salt sits on the surface of the meat, the more moisture the meat will be able to hold onto during cooking. And also you really don't want to be adding two hours of cure time onto a six hour cook time because then this whole thing becomes an all day affair, which I really don't want for you guys. The next day, when I pull my butt out of the fridge, you can see that it's got a dry matte finish. That's called a pellicle and it's going to act as a magnet for smoke flavor. Next, I'm going to head outside and set up my smoker, which surprise is actually a grill. I think more people watching this video have a grill than a dedicated smoker. Now to turn this grill into a smoker, I'm going to remove one of the grates to expose the direct heating elements. Then I'm going to drop a smoker chip box right onto those grates. I think this one specifically is the Weber brand and it's very sturdy. I like it a lot. Now I'm going to load this box with two to three heaping handfuls of soaked medium sized wood chips. I'm using apple wood because I think apple and pork taste pretty good together, but any wood would taste good here. Then I'll seal up the box, turn the burner under the box up to high, then roll the other two burners to either very low or turn them off. On this little Weber Spirit, one burner on high and two burners off creates the ideal 300 F smoking temperature. About 15 to 20 minutes later, the wood chips are at a ripping smolder. So I'll snatch my cured pork shoulder and drop it on the side of my grill where the burners are turned off. From here, I'm going to close the lid and turn the burner down to about medium high so the temperature inside the box stays below 325 and above 275. 45 minutes later, when I checked back, you can see that we've got some excellent smoke flavor kissing the outside of this pork. Now I'm choosing to add one more round of chips into my box because I'm a bad boy and I like more smoke flavor, but if you wanted to speed things up, you could pull your shoulder right now. After one more round of smoking, this butt has been deeply, intimately French kissed with applewood smoke. From here, I'm going to bring the pork inside and get it set up for oven cooking. I'm choosing to finish this thing in the oven because it's way easier than maintaining the temperature on the grill all afternoon. This way, all I do is 45 minutes of smoking up front, then I set it and forget it for the rest of the day. Once I got this pork into a roasting pan covered with parchment and two layers of foil, I'm going to throw it into a 315F oven to slowly melt for four to six hours while I thank Porter Road for supplying me with this beautiful piece of meat and for sponsoring this video. Porter Road is not your run-of-the-mill online meat shop. It was actually founded by trained chefs and originally started in Nashville, Tennessee as a brick-and-mortar whole animal butcher shop. Because the founders are chefs, the team at Porter Road truly understands quality. That's why they set out to develop the deepest relationships possible with the people who raise their meat, the farmers. Porter Road sells meat from animals that were pasture-raised in the U.S. with no added hormones or antibiotics. Look, you can get commodity pork shoulder pretty much anywhere in this country, but as a chef, let me just say that commodity pork is the worst tasting meat. It's really watery, it has almost no intramuscular fat, and those animals are treated super poorly. When you get meat from Porter Road, you're getting truly great quality and flavor. That's a result of pasture-raising and dry aging. Porter Road is really great if you don't have a trusted local butcher or if your butcher doesn't stock all the cool kid chef cuts like Denver Steak or Terrace Major. So if you want to try it right now, you can get 15% off your first order by using my link down in the description. Just go down there, click the link, and the discount will be automatically applied. And after three hours of cook time, I'm gonna pull the pork shoulder out of the oven and flip it over. This allows the meat to cook more evenly and gets the top side swimming in all that rendered pork fat. Once flipped, I'm gonna bundle it back up and load it back into the oven to finish cooking for one to two more hours. And after roughly five hours of slow roasting, this pork is ready to check for doneness. I'm looking for two things here. Number one, the shoulder blade bone should pull right out cleanly. And number two, I should be able to push my tongs right through into the middle of the roast. That tells me the meat is tender enough to be pulled and that looks perfect. Now after a quick 30-minute rest, I'm gonna carefully break this shoulder down into large chunky shreds. Resist the urge to shred this into tiny little thready bits. The whole beauty of the slow roasting process that we used is that the fat and collagen in the meat are super gently melted. And that means that the meat is very tender and juicy, but also it holds itself together so that we can eat larger, meatier pieces like this. Also, you'll notice that I'm shredding this meat right into its own rendered fat and juices. That's a core part of the melted pork recipe that we used in the restaurant. The juices are garlicky, smoky, and scented with roasty thyme. And the fat just kinda lubes everything up. Whoa. It's salty, it's sweet, it's perfectly smoked, and succulent AF. What else can I say? It's good. Me likey. Next, I'm gonna show you the three most delicious ways to serve this pork. Number one is the classic smoked pork sandwich. To make it, I'll start with a toasted, squishy brioche bun, then drop a dollop of mayo on the bottom and slide to spread it out. Next, I'll snuggle up five to six ounces of my juicy, chunky pulled pork, then I'll top with some creamy cabbage slaw. The recipe for this is in the description or in my barbecue sides video. To finish, I'll drop on a lightly mayoed top bun and give it a firm but loving squish. This is the most straightforward and probably the best way to serve this pork. You've got a sweet, soft bun, toothsome but tender smoked pork, and crunchy, creamy cabbage. It's the trifecta of mouthly pleasures here. Up next is smoked pork banh mi. To make that, I'll first refresh a soft banh mi style baguette in the oven for about two minutes to crisp up the outer edges, then I'll slather on a big spoon of mayonnaise to lube up the bread, then drop five to six ounces of smoked pork. Next on go some batons of sliced cucumber to bring some juicy freshness, then I'll drop on some pickled, shredded daikon and carrots. The recipe for this will be down in the description or linked in my banh mi video. Next, I'm gonna top with some sliced, fresh jalapenos and some rough chopped, fresh cilantro. And that is a more than respectable banh mi sandwich. You got juicy pork, crunchy pickles, fresh herbs, you got some jalapeno for spice, and overall it's just a bee-ute. Ooh, and I love that brittle crispiness of the baguette. Lastly is a smoked pork taco. For that, I'm gonna drop four ounces of pork onto a double-decker of heated corn tortillas, then I'll top with some fresh diced onion, then chopped fresh cilantro, then I'm gonna drizzle on some fresh tomatillo salsa. Recipe in the description, if you're wondering. Then finally, I'll top with some shredded chihuahua cheese or queso fresco. Mmm! Tacos are good food. Just as good as any sandwich, and in my opinion, this is a great version. The light smoke on the pork really brings a depth that you don't often get in a shredded taco. I really hope you guys put this recipe to the test sometime soon, and if you want some more ideas on how to serve this pork, I'm gonna throw my barbecue sides video right here. Now, let's eat this thing! Yay! Oh my god.