Chinese “pulled” Crispy Duck…no Duck and not Crispy

So this one is easy-peasy. Genesis of this was I wanted to do pulled pork but with a totally different flavour. I didn’t want smokey BBQ pulled pork, lovely as that is. I wanted to see if I could totally change it up. I called this article “Crispy Duck” because that was the flavour I wanted to go for – not because I was going for Crispy or Duck !

This is also not an experiment in tools, toys or technique. Well, OK, maybe it is. I use my slow cooker very rarely. Actually it only comes out for the office chilli-making events. You know, for Superbowl lunches or those sorts of things. I bought this thing when we moved to the USA and “smart home/smart appliances” being another of my keen interests, I looked for one that could talk to Alexa, and where I could talk to Alexa and so we could have a three-way conversation about how my dinner was coming along. Suffice to say…mission accomplished, but I’m not too sure of the Use Case for that one ! I have a nice slow cooker, whose job quite honestly is just to sit there and heat up food…so talking to it isn’t really necessary given decisions are made over periods of hours not minutes or seconds.

You can anticipate “moves” with a slow cooker, and plan accordingly…so connecting it to the Internet isn’t so useful. Anyway, if you can then you should, right ?

So back to the recipe… A typically inexpensive pork shoulder (butt). This one had the bone in, and because of the cooking process, that makes no difference. Aficionados will claim that the bone makes it taste better. Maybe it does. The large shoulder bone does, of course, allow for a “ta-da” theatre opportunity as the cook completes.

In this case, the pork shoulder was joined by the following in its slow-cook :

• Five spice powder (made famous by Michael McIntyre)
• Szechuan (sichuan, or whatever) pepper – Awesome stuff…savoury space rocks !
• Hoi-sin sauce
• Soy sauce
• Honey
• Ginger
• Garlic
• Rice wine vinegar
• Sriracha (for the kick !)
• Sesame oil (the taste of sesame oil…mmmm)

All of the above “to taste” and if you need guidelines, Google “Chinese Slow Cooked Pulled Pork” – there are lots of options. You just have to keep adding until it tastes good. Although this recipe does NOT conform to the “less is more” principle. There were flavours that sounded good. I put them it. It was good.

Then, tell Alexa to cook for 8 hours. Or do it manually. This process is so forgiving that my pork shoulder was cooked from frozen. 8 hours of slow cooking will sort out just about anything, I suppose. The only tweak I made to compensate was to cook higher for a couple of hours, then down to normal. Anyway, at some point late in the cook, you can open it up, break apart the pork with a spoon and pull out the shoulder bone. Impressively tender, but not that clever…and perfectly “meh” for even an amateur BBQ cook….photo opportunity all the same (which I missed !).

Once that’s out, then its pulling and combining time. Admittedly in this one there was too much liquid. You can see it in the first photo. The flavour was, however, pretty close. Maybe too intense…maybe less is really more…maybe next time a little less. The verdict was “Success” however and it’s on the list for another attempt sometime in the future.

Of course a dish like this makes loads of leftovers, so before I did that I did drain the meat somewhat of the excess liquid. I will be able to see how that improves the texture next time.

The dish was served with plain flour tacos (shop bought), and some sort of traditional accompaniments. The coleslaw was a Thai recipe we had, and I clean forgot cucumber…oh well.

Next time, we do all this outside in a Dutch Oven in the Kamado.