Pulled pork is about as close to pure comfort food as it gets, and almost every version of it is buried in sugar. Brown sugar in the rub, brown sugar in the pot, and a bottle of barbecue sauce over the top.
Farmer David wanted the comfort without the sugar. He wanted it made the healthiest way he could make it, and he did not want to give anything up to get there. What he found is that the sauce was in the pot the whole time. Carrots, apples, and onions braise under the shoulder all day, catching every drop of fat, spice, and broth that comes off it. When the pork is done, everything left in the pot goes into the blender and comes out as barbecue sauce.
32 grams of protein, 420 calories, and no sugar added. The only sweetness in the pot is the carrots and apples.
South Carolina already knew how
South Carolina is the only state with all four of barbecue's classic sauces: vinegar and pepper, mustard, light tomato, and heavy tomato. The one that belongs to South Carolina alone is mustard. The founder of the South Carolina Barbeque Association traces it to the German families the colony recruited starting in the 1730s, who settled first in Dorchester County, which is home to Wishbone Farms (South Carolina Barbeque Association).
The bottle came much later. Popular bottled sauces now carry 12 to 17 grams of sugar in a two tablespoon serving (Food Network). The idea of sweetening barbecue sauce with vegetables is not new, either. At least one pitmaster brand bottles a no-sugar Carolina sauce sweetened with apple, butternut squash, and carrots (True Made Foods).
This recipe makes that sauce in the same pot as the pork, from the same ingredients that braised it.
The sauce is already in the pot
Build a bed of carrots, apples, onions, and garlic in the bottom of the crockpot and set the shoulder on top. Over eight hours the rub washes off the pork and into the liquid below it. The smoked paprika gives the sauce its color and smoke, the mustard gives it the Carolina tang, and the fat and juices give it body.
There is no browning step. The pork goes straight from the refrigerator to the pot. Searing a shoulder before a long braise is optional at best, and the rub and eight hours do the work on their own (Chowhound).
Measure the salt
The 2 teaspoons (10 g) of sea salt in the rub is deliberately light. It seasons the pork overnight and washes into the pot, where the broth, tomato paste, and adobo add their own. Do not salt the pot. Taste the sauce only after it is blended and reduced, and finish it with salt then. It is always easier to add salt at the end than to fix a sauce that has too much.
Ingredients
From Wishbone Farms in our Sunday Braise Bundle
- 1 Boston butt or boneless picnic shoulder (5 lb)
- 1 pouch (14 oz) chicken bone broth, thawed
The rub
- 2 tsp sea salt (10 g)
- 2 T smoked paprika
- 1 T ground mustard
- 2 tsp black pepper
- 2 tsp garlic powder
- 2 tsp onion powder
The pot
- 2 lb carrots, cut in large chunks
- 4 apples, cored and quartered, skin on
- 2 large yellow onions, cut in thick slices
- 6 garlic cloves, smashed
- 1 can (6 oz) tomato paste
- ¼ cup apple cider vinegar
- ½ can (7 oz) chipotle in adobo
The pork shoulder and bone broth are both in the Sunday Braise Bundle. Order for Pickup on Thursday or Saturday, or have Farmer David deliver to you.
Method
- Rub the night before. Mix the rub and work all of it into every surface of the pork. Refrigerate overnight.
- Build the bed. In the morning, put the carrots, apples, onions, and garlic in the bottom of an 8 quart crockpot.
- Add the liquid. Whisk the broth, tomato paste, vinegar, and chipotle together and pour it over the bed.
- Set the pork. Lay the shoulder on top, fat side up, along with any rub left on the plate.
- Low, lid on, for 8 to 10 hours, until the bone pulls clean or the meat falls apart under a fork. A boneless picnic usually finishes toward the early end.
- Shred. Lift out the pork and let it rest. Pull out the bone and any large pieces of fat, then shred the rest with two forks.
- Skim. Spoon the fat off the top of the liquid in the pot.
- Blend the sauce. Blend everything left in the pot until smooth. With hot liquid, fill the blender halfway and vent the lid, or use an immersion blender right in the pot.
- Reduce and finish. If the sauce is thin, simmer it on the stove for 10 to 15 minutes. Then taste it and season with sea salt a pinch at a time. If it needs more tang, add vinegar a tablespoon at a time.
- Sauce the pork. Toss the pork in as much sauce as you like and serve the rest on the side.
Using your own rub or sauce
If you have a rub you love, use it. Just know that most commercial rubs are mostly salt, and this pot only works if the salt stays light. Check the label and use only as much of your rub as delivers about 10 g of salt, or use one without salt and add the 2 teaspoons of sea salt yourself. A saltier rub will make a sauce from the pot that is too salty to eat, and nothing will fix it.
If you have a sauce you love, use that instead. The pork does not need the pot sauce to be good. Skim and discard the liquid, and you still have a shoulder braised in bone broth.
What you might add
- Cayenne, at the end, if you want more heat
- Another splash of apple cider vinegar, for an eastern Carolina edge
- Quick pickled red onion, on top
- A vinegar slaw, on the sandwich or beside it
A dozen sandwiches, and the second day is better
One shoulder makes about 12 portions with plenty of sauce to spare. Let it cool, portion the pork with its sauce, and freeze it. It holds for a year, and like most braises it is even better reheated than it was fresh.
