I got a good deal on a pork shoulder at the farmers’ market today, it is frozen, and about 7 pounds. I’d like to make a pulled pork for sandwiches, and filling for tamales.
Can I cook it all with seasonings that could work with several end uses, pull it and freeze the cooked meat in smaller batches? There’s only two people in our house (+ one chihuahua :p), so I’d like to be able to have multiple smaller meals, not a massive pile of meat to plow through!
Of course, if you have any other uses for pulled pork, please share!
You can season all of it with salt, pepper, and some fairly generic seasonings like cumin, a little cayenne, a little crushed red pepper flake, maybe some thyme or rosemary. Cook it all up, and freeze it in one-meal size portions in zip-top bags. Then, add additional seasonings as you heat it up. You can even put the additional seasonings in the oil you’re going to re-heat the pork in, and let the seasonings get fragrant and infuse the oil with flavor before you heat it.
You could make pot pie with shredded pork, or sautee some red and green bell peppers, onions and garlic (and mushrooms if you want) and cook up some rice (I prefer brown) and serve them with an Asian-style sauce (teriyaki? Hoisin?) then serve the whole mess with iceberg lettuce wraps.
Yes, we’ve done that many times. It freezes and thaws beautifully… though you’re gonna be a little shocked by how much solid white fat it contains.
We like to eat it in corn tortillas, with green salsa, sour cream, lots of fresh cilantro, and a squirt of lime juice.
Also, drowning in barbecue sauce. But you knew that.
If we didn’t always eat up our supply in those two ways, I’d try a posole, or even substitute it for chicken in tortilla soup.
I would just slow dry roast or smoke a shoulder seasoned liberally with salt and pepper (slap some plain yellow mustard on it, too, to help the spices stick), and then freeze the leftovers in one or two pound portions. A 7 pound roast should yield about 4 pounds of cooked meat (the general rule is around 60% yield after the fat is rendered and some of the moisture evaporates.) As mentioned above, cooked pork freezes and thaws perfectly well.
thank you all! I’m absolute going to try the Asian Lettuce wrap idea, for some reason that never even occurred to me.
My main concern was that thawed, cooked pork would get dry and have a weird texture, but it sounds like I’m good to go for a day of mass cooking.
now all I need is my glass of cooking wine…
I usually reheat my pork with a splash of apple juice or broth. That helps keep it from being too dry.
I do this, too. Not only does it keep the pork from drying out during the re-heating process, but it helps to incorporate whatever seasonings you’re adding, and gives it more of a ‘fresh-cooked’ taste!
My mom always freezes her cooked chicken and turkey in broth. In fact she does this with the Thanksgiving turkey days before Thanksgiving because it tastes better than freshly cooked turkey.
I third the broth suggestion. Apparently you can get pork broth at Asian markets if you don’t want to use chicken or vegetable.
When I get a pork shoulder roast, I season it all over with barbecue spices and put it in a slow cooker on a bed of sliced onions and garlic. I pour about a cup of apple cider and set the temperature to cook on low for 9-10 hours while I’m at work. When I come home, I take the hunk o’meat out of the slow cooker, shred it and put into as many quart size Ziploc bags as it takes for the meat and juice. The next day, I remove the fat, heat up some pork in the microwave, slap onto a potato roll with some coleslaw and enjoy.
There’s enough fat in a pork shoulder that things should render into the whole chunk of meat - so when you reheat it’ll create its own mini-broth.
Another use for pulled pork:
Nachos
My mother likes to use blue corn tortilla chips, but any kind of chips will do.
Cover a microwavable plate with tortilla chips. Spread sparingly with pulled pork (or not so sparingly, if you’d rather model them on those served by the microbrewery where my parents first encountered this idea).
Add generous quantities of black beans and mexican corn (canned corn with peppers). Add a little barbeque sauce. Sprinkle with shredded cheese.
Heat until bubbly.
Serve with guacamole.