One of my favorite things about having a larger living space is being able to have people over. I LOVE having friends and family fill my home to share great meals and fun times- who doesn't? Hermits. I am certainly not one of those. So now that I have a large enough kitchen to really cook in and space for people to sit, I want to entertain as much as possible. In the week leading up to Halloween I had high hopes for traditional seasonal activities; finding the perfect costume, going out to parties, carving pumpkins....but since for some reason I live in Connecticut we got snowed in on part night we only got the pumpkin carving done.
I originally planned on having people over the Thursday before Halloween with the intention of carving pumpkins, drinking some good beers and eating some delicious pulled pork. We ended up eating, drinking and watching The Exorcist instead. Not a bad evening, considering we had Exorcist virgins in the group and the food and drink did not disappoint.
For our autumnal food fest I decided to try my hand at pulled pork. Maybe barbecue is a summer thing, but this was the perfect, warming meal for a chilly October night. This was probably the easiest meal I've ever made other than a sandwich. It takes five ingredients, five minutes of effort and about 18 hours to make. Crock Pot it! If you make this for any meat-eating, breathing thing, they will love it and you for creating such a delicious meal.
Get your hands on a 4 lb. pork butt (In my brief quest for this cut I found it was more widely available than pork shoulder, which can also be used in this recipe). Make sure you have a bottle of your favorite BBQ sauce anywhere from 12-16 oz. in size, depending on how saucy you like your pig (I used a 14 oz bottle and I thought it was delicious). If you can find Rufus Teague BBQ Sauce with "A Touch-o-Heat" get that. It was perfect. Have a can of ginger ale handy and if you want to get totally bonkers you can add your favorite beer to the mix (we added a brown ale). Two onions complete your ingredients!
Slice one onion and put that in the bottom of the crock pot, place the butt over the onion and slice the other onion to go on top. I modified the original recipe here by adding a beer, so instead of pouring 1 Cup of ginger ale over the pork I only used 1/2 Cup of the ginger ale and poured in the brown ale to add some smoky, carameliness. Cook on Low for 12 hours. After 12 hours your entire house will smell like pork and onions, so open a window. Then drain the liquid (fat) from the pork and onions and shred the pork butt, discarding any large bits of fat. Return onions and pork to the Crock Pot, stirring in the bottle of BBQ sauce. Continue to cook for another 4-6 hours.
I served this with some coleslaw made with hot mustard, honey and a little bit of mayo, sliced green pepper and pre-cut cole slaw mix. Since this was obviously a Southern-focused meal, the cole slaw went on the pulled pork sandwiches, some with pickles, some without. Drew even shared some of the Zapp's Cajun Crawtator's my Mom shipped from Mississippi. This meal successfully warmed and porkified our house! Great for pulled pork taco left overs, too!
http://www.food.com/recipe/pulled-pork-crock-pot-131018
