Pulled Pork - Slow Cooking, but worth the wait

Start with a Boston butt pork roast. If you're not sure what this is, ask the person behind your butcher counter. The folks at my local Hannaford are always really friendly and helped me when I didn't even know I was looking for a Boston butt.

Don't be turned off by the name of the hunk of meat you're buying. It's not really a "butt" like the backside of a pig. A butt portion of a pig comes from the top part of the shoulder. Here's a link to the Wikipedia explanation if you're interested.

When you're ready to cook this, you can coat it with my spicy spice rub recipe or another great option is the Memphis Dry BBQ Rub from 500 Low-Carb Recipes by Dana Carpender. I can't post the recipe as it would certainly be in bad taste for me to plagiarize and it would probably be illegal too. Pick up the book. Not all the recipes are winners, but there are a bunch of good ones. If you buy the book and you find some recipes you love, tell me about them with an email or post a comment. If you want to know my favorites, you can drop me a line or I'll eventually get around to posting about some of the low-carb books I've read.

Once you've coated your roast, you can either wrap it all up in foil to keep the moisture trapped, recommended if you're going to have to pull this apart another time, or you can set it out on a broiler pan and let the juices drip down. I've done it both ways. If you wrap it, more of your spice rub will come off in the accumulated moisture, if you don't your roast will have a nice spice crust on the outside and may be slightly more dry.

Roast at 225 F for 10 hours or until it reaches 175 F internal temperature, I did mine overnight. After ten hours, it's time to either put it away or pull the meat apart. The best way to pull it apart when it's hot is to use two forks and pull across the grain (the direction of the muscle tissue). If you start getting stringy chunks of meat pulling up with your forks, then you're doing it right. Sorry this is hard part to describe. Maybe I'll post some cooking videos sometime so things like this will be easier to visualize. If I don't do that sometime soon, someone nudge me and remind me what a good idea that might be. ;)

Once you've got your pork pulled, either add a little more of your desired rub sprinkled on top or use some reduced sugar BBQ sauce like Kraft's "Light Original" Reduced Calorie Barbecue Sauce or KC Masterpiece "Low Calorie Classic Blend". Both are worth trying, but my wife and I seem to prefer the Kraft one.

If you're looking to go all out BBQ, whip up some homemade cole slaw no milk, no sugar (Splenda instead) and you're good to go.

If you give this a try and have some questions or suggestions, drop me a line or post a comment. I'm sure others would be happy to hear what you have to say.

If anyone has their own low-carb recipes that you'd like to share with the world, feel free to send them my may and I'd be happy to post them and give you all the credit.

Cheers,
Alex

PS. Don't fear the fat!