Sous Vide Pulled Pork

 22 August 2022

Recipe from Sous Vide for Everybody, America's Test Kitchen, 2018, p.86.  Recipe also available online.

I like pulled pork sandwiches and have written about them in this blog several times. I have made them using my gas grill as a smoker then finishing roasting the meat indoors in the oven. I have made used a slow cooker to prepare the pork indoors. Now, a third method: sous vide where the pork, sealed in an air-tight bag, is cooked "sous vide" in a constant temperature water bath. 

I purchased a 2½-pound boneless pork butt roast. This was about half the size of what was called for in the recipe so I adjusted the other ingredients accordingly. A spice mixture was made by combining vegetable oil, salt, sugar, pepper, smoked paprika, garlic powder, and cayenne pepper in a small bowl and heating this in the microwave until "bubbling and fragrant". I saw no bubbles as the mixture was too dry, but it was fragrant. Yellow mustard and liquid smoke were added to the warm spice mixture and these bubbled. The pork was placed in a vacuum bag and the spice mixture was spread over the meat using a spatula. Air was removed from the bag and it was placed in an immersion circulator (a device that maintains a constant temperature water bath) set to 165°. The prep took 30 minutes up to the time the pork was placed in the water. After 20+ hours the now-tender pork was removed and shredded using the paddle attachment on a stand mixer. Unfortunately the vacuum bag leaked during the cooking period and some water diluted the spices. Nonetheless, cooking liquid was defatted and some of it was mixed with bottled barbecue sauce. It took 15 minutes to prepare the pork after removing it from the sous vide machine.

This was the easiest, quickest method I have used to make pulled pork!  The end product is as tender and as tasty as pork made any other way that I have tried it. Much of the flavor comes from the sauce and in this instance I took a short cut by using my favorite bottled sauce, enhancing its flavor with the cooking liquid. The final sauce was a little thin due to the leak in the vacuum bag but this was a minor issue.