Pulled Pig experience

[bbell]

Re: Pulled Pig experience

Wade, I am so impressed!

What was the dough recipe and the temp of the oven?

[Wiley]

Re: Pulled Pig experience

Bill, I'm guessing that you are confusing me (Wiley) with Wade (wlively) if I'm wrong please ignore this post.

I am new to all this and so after trying several recipes blind with mixed results I have decided to start with what I have the most experience with and expand from there. So this is a fairly wet dough sort of based on the "No Knead Bread" recipe:

1200 gms white flour (Costco ConAgra Mills "Harvest" supposedly for bread)
300 grams home ground whole wheat berries ( Montana "Bronze Chief")
3/4 teaspoon dried yeast (Red Star)
16 gms ground sea salt
1200 grams water

Oven temp was 525F on the hearth and just over 600F on dome. Bake time was 20 minutes I could have probably pulled it at 18 or 19 minutes. Internal temp of the rolls was 209F. By using a wet dough I find I can use a hotter oven which has yielded bread with a nicer browner crust. If my calculations are correct this is a dough with 80% hydration.

Here is a picture of the pulled pork this morning.

Hope this helps,
Wiley

[bbell]

Re: Pulled Pig experience

Hi Wiley, what recipe do you use with your rolls?
Thanks

[Wiley]

Re: Pulled Pig experience

Bill, the recipe ingredients listed above are combined using the "No Knead Bread" process.

I start the day before the bake usually around four in the afternoon and do a stretch and fold just before going to bed and place the dough in the fridge. The following morning I pull the bowl out first thing before our morning walk. Then about two hours after the walk I do another stretch and fold and divide and shape the rolls, placing them on baker's parchment. The parchment makes transferring the rolls to the WFO easy and fast. Then about an hour later I light the WFO and about an 40 minutes later fire is raked out. The cast iron fry pan I use to create steam is transferred from the flaming WFO to a wood pad set on the the shelf outside for the few minutes the raking requires. Once the coals are raked out the pan goes back inside. The door is left off during the first five to ten minutes after the coals are raked out so the temp drops to a more useable range. The last ten minutes the door is closed so the temps can equalize between dome and hearth. The door is opened and the pan once again removed. The floor is then snuffled with a wet towel on the end of a stick/pole and in go the rolls; and the pan is set back inside and sprayed with a quick blast from the garden sprayer and the door shut. Thirty seconds later the door is opened and another short blast of water into the pan and the door closed for the duration of the bake.

I have a dedicated stainless steel sprayer which is filled with hot water while the fire is heating the WFO. The Ove Glove is a great invention!

The stretch and fold process I learned and use came from this link:

Sourdough Home - Stretch and Fold - A Gentle Way To Develop Dough

The double spray (thirty seconds apart) technique came from Richard Bertinet's book: "Crust, Bread To Get Your Teeth Into".

Hope this helps,
Wiley

[bbell]

Re: Pulled Pig experience

Wiley, this is very helpful and I appreciate the time and effort to put it together.

Had 30 people over for a holiday social and used Trader Joe's and Costco solely for the food. Great spread and easy to slip hors d'oeuvres in and out of the oven. Found this at Costco and it was fantastic. Extremely moist and flavorful. Your rolls would have been perfect for the next day's sandwiches. All ready cooked and only needed 45 minutes in the oven before serving.
Costco
I see they're constantly sold out so here's the manufacturers website:
Porchetta Primata | Traditional Italian Porchetta

In a pinch!

Bill

[sjmeff]

Re: Pulled Pig experience

I wanted to thank the folks on this thread for advice regarding pulled pork. This weekend I smoked two bone-in shoulder roasts (~8 lbs each) for a party and they came out perfectly.

Here is the process that I used:

1) Applied dry rub 24 hrs. ahead of cooking.
2) Fired oven to pizza temps night before; spread out coals and then put door on before bedtime.
3) In the morning, I took off the door for about 90 minutes to let the oven cool a bit. Also took meat out of fridge about 60 min before cooking.
4) Moved the few remaining coals to one side and put in smoker box filled with soaked hickory chips. (I added more chips a few times to keep the smoke going.)
5) Put roasts on Tuscan-like grill (firebricks holding up grill grates) in center of oven. Put the door back in place with it cracked open.

It took about 6 hours to get the roasts up to 195 in the center. Afterwards I put the roasting pans in a closed paper bag for an hour, then let them cool a bit and pulled the meat. They were delicious. We got lots of compliments.

[kellytoronto]

Re: Pulled Pig experience

Why would you heat to pizza temps overnight vs. just warm it up a bit in the AM?

[sjmeff]

Re: Pulled Pig experience

I think you could do it that way. In my case, I wanted to get it cooking first thing in the morning to be ready by lunch. I was also aiming for "low and slow," so I wanted to make sure the oven wasn't super hot, but saturated enough to cook slowly for several hours (6 hrs in my case).

I also wanted to avoid having to re-fire the oven as some above commented that it could leave an acrid taste in the meat. The only smoke that I had was from a few pieces of hickory.

I fired it too late in the day, so in the morning I had to let it cool off. Next time I'll light it earlier in the day before I close it for the night.

In any event, I think there are probably many ways to do it. I've found that my oven is pretty forgiving. I've had few cases of being disappointed with the final product.

[wlively]

Re: Pulled Pig experience

Why would you heat to pizza temps overnight vs. just warm it up a bit in the AM?

I just did 5 10lb each pork shoulders, at the same time, for our fly-in on Saturday. Put them in at 300 deg and it took just a few minutes short of 12 hours. They were a big hit, you gotta love these ovens.

To answer, you want to make sure you saturate the oven to the temps you want. It will be very hard to tell if you don't have in brick thermocouples. I do, and have tried to conserve wood and time by shorting the burn and found that if I don't shoot for center of mass temps at least 200 deg F above my target that the heat drops too rapidly as the temps normalize across the mass of the oven. It is better to be too hot then run out of heat.

[Tscarborough]

Re: Pulled Pig experience

I track my temps from flame out for 5 days every time so that I can do my burning at the right time. I can't wait to make this pork, it sounds great.

[tdibratt]

Re: Pulled Pig experience

Just tried a pulled pork on the weekend. Put about 8 LB pork shoulder with dry rub into a cast iron dutch oven. It was sitting with the rub on it for 24 hours. I put it in the pot fat side up. I then poured a bottle of beer into the pot careful not to wash the rub off the top. Added 1 chopped cooking onion.

I fired up the oven and got it to about 500 degrees or so and then I needed to head out so I threw the pot (lid on) in with the fire still going around 8AM and told my wife to come back around 9:30 and just put the door on the oven and keave it open a crack so any excess smoke would get out.

Came back home around 1PM, and took a look. The pork was nicely charred on the outside and I stuck a thermometer in it and it was done. It pulled apart so nicely and was very very juicy. Invited some friends over and everyone was amazed.

I plan on doing it again this weekend but would like a little smoke which means maybe I should keep the lid off the pot at the start and let it get some smoke.

Thoughts?

[Stan]

Re: Pulled Pig experience

I did a pork shoulder that I boned, stuffed, and rolled (a la Porchetta). I stuck it in at 350 degrees around midnight and came back to perfect, pull-able pork at 6 am. It was a sleepless night (worrying!), but well worth it.

Stan