Korean BBQ Style Pulled Pork

From time to time, I do a bit of cooking, as you might have seen here and as I mentioned in my article on my parental leave. I posted the result of this on my Instagram and was asked to share the recipe, and I'll do so in the following lines.

I made pulled pork in a Korean BBQ inspired way, along with a asian salad.

First of all it is important to have access to the proper meat to begin with. We have a local butcher, Westerwald Fleischerei, who locally sources his meat, butchers and distributes it himself. I got an assortment of different ribs and sausages, along with a portion of pork butt (which is not actually part of the pigs behind, but from the neck or shoulder area).

As we're a household of two (well, three, but our daughter is 6 weeks old and won't eat any of it), I'm fine with a two pount portion of pork butt. Unpack it, clean it, cut away any string that maybe attached to the meat. You can salt it, if you want to. I wanted to marinade it in a korean BBQ sauce. You can buy that sauce at your grocery store. If you have trouble to find Korean sauce, you could try Hoisin Sauce (for example by Flying Goose) instead. Heinz offers a Korean Barbecue Sauce as well. Otherwise you can make your own based on soj sauce, sesame oil, pepper flakes, garlic and ginger. There are a couple of recipes online, see what speaks most to you.

I went with some Bulgogi marinade by sempio. In case of Korean BBQ you could use Galbi was well, both are meant for beef. I went with Bulgogi as it had stronger seasoning. I added a bit of sesame oil to it and filled a freezer bag with the meat and the marinade and let it rest in the fridge for at least 24 hours.

As I didn't manage to get my hands on one of these yet. That's an IKEA Koncis, a roasting tin with grill roast, I had to improvise. So I went with a quiche dish and a cake rack. Worked well, but still, at the low price of the Koncis, I'll get one next time I'm at IKEA.

The meat is marinated and I was thinking, will I go with a rub or not. But it is pulled pork, so rub is more or less a must have. I mixed my own rub, based on paprika (3 tbsp), orange zest pepper (half a tbsp), salt (tbsp), ginger (tsbp) and cardamom (half a tbsp). Some people "prime" their meat in mustard before applying the rub, but that would mix up the Korean style flavour. There are a couple of great and tasty korean pastes, like Gochujang that work great. Using Gochujang would replace the marinade step in whole and you would just rub it with that, let it rest and start from there.

I added the marinade from the freezer bag to the quiche dish and added around 400 ml of orange juice. Not the mild one, but one with a bit more acid. Now you put it in the oven at 130° for around 4 hours, or until the core temperatur reaches 92-94°.

After 3,5 hours and letting it rest for another 30-45 minutes. At best you put it in tin foil and keep it warm. I shredded the meat and mixed the reduced sauce under the meat. Next time I'd add more liquid to the marinade / orange juice, as it cooked down quite a bit. The taste was intense, but it could have been more juicy.

The pulled pork is later garnished with spring onions and some sesame seeds. You could eat it with rice, with a salad and it makes for a great topping on a sandwich.

I can't use a grill yet, as we're living in an apartment, so I'm using the regular oven. Cooking this can be a bit difficult, not really because of the technique, but more because of the spices and sauces. You might get some asian sauces and such, but not Korean products, so I'd suggest you look for a larger stores or asian markets, that might cover these. I have made spare ribs with hoisin sauce, coarse salt and sesame seeds, those were awesome and I can see myself trying out the Gochujang next time on a larger piece of meat.

Hope you liked the recipe and will try it out yourself, there is a lot more flavours out there than just "hot" 😉