Curtis Stone's pulled pork with slaw and bacon cornbread

Hi everyone, I'm going to show you my take on American barbecue, made

with Aussie boneless pork shoulder. I'm telling you it is rich pulled pork

with a tangy slaw and bacon cornbread on the side, it's gonna blow your

mind. It's a great meal to make when you've got friends coming over,

especially if you're gonna watch a game together. But it's also great

because you can make it ahead of time. It's delicious. Give it a go. Here I

have my boneless pork shoulder. Now you'll notice it's not skinless, you

gotta keep that skin on because we're going to get that fantastic crispy

crackling. It's a fantastic cut for slow cooking. Now what you're looking for

here is meat that's pinkish-red in colour, with a good amount of marbling

through the meat. And that good amount of fat that goes through will keep

this very moist and delicious. Now shoulder is one of the cheaper but also

tougher cuts of pork. So you want to make sure that you cook it low and

slow. That means the fat melts through and you end up with this

incredibly tender and rich meat that just falls apart when you cut into it.

Before I preheat the oven, I'm going to make sure that the rack is in the

centre, then set it to 150 Celsius, I know it's very low. And if you're

cooking on fan-forced, 130 please. Now you make sure to season the

pork meat really well with salt and pepper. See how there's been scores

cut into this pork skin? Season in between those scores. Because what's

going to happen is that salt is also going to flavour your pork but most

importantly, it's going to draw moisture out of it, right. And the best thing

about that is the skin here is going to go super crispy and crunchy. Then

you can turn it over seasoning on the other side as well with both salt and

pepper. Now you keep the skin side up in a shallow roasting pan and you

roast it for five and a half hours. That’s right, five and a half hours. And

don't worry about the skin going crisp, that comes right at the end.

Remember this is low and slow. That's the secret to incredibly tender

meat. Now while the pork’s in the oven, I'm going to make a batch of

delicious bacon cornbread to serve with the pork. This time, what you

need is a rack to be near the bottom of the oven because you want all

that heat to come up from the bottom so it doesn't overcook but you get

that nice crust. Here we go, grab your frying pan, what we're going to do

is start off by cooking the bacon for about four to five minutes, till it's nice

and crisp. Now I'm using streaky bacon, because I want that fat to render

out of the bacon into the pan. Throw it in the pan, it doesn't have to be hot

when you put it in, it'll slowly get there and the fat will render out and the

bacon will get crispy and wonderful. When the bacon is crispy, drain it

from the pan and reserve a tablespoon of that bacon fat separately. Next,

we need two bowls, one for the dry, one for the wet mixture. So we start

off with the dry ingredients. What I'm going to do is take my cornmeal and

put some flour, a little sugar, some baking powder, bicarbonate of soda,

and some salt. So what I'm going to do is get a little whisk and just mix

them all together. And then, in a separate bowl, what we're going to do is

mix the wet ingredients. So into this bowl, we take the buttermilk and two

eggs and whisk. All we do here is just gently whisk the bottom and just

pour in those dry ingredients. You don't want to overwork it. Just combine.

Now your bacon should be getting nice and crispy. You'll see a lot of that

fat does render out when you cook the bacon. And over here I've got my

butter which is beautifully melted as well. Turn off your heat, strain that

bacon fat, keep the fat. And then finally what you do is stir in the bacon

pieces and the melted butter. This time I just get a silicone spatula, work

around the outside, fold that bacon and butter through. So using the

reserved bacon fat, what we do is we get our brush and we just go ahead

and brush the inside of our pan. Then you pick up your pan. You take that

beautiful cornbread mixture and you pour it right on in. Isn't that a

beautiful thing? You don't really need to spread it out. It just falls down. If

it doesn't, you can just give it a little tap on the side so it spreads nice and

evenly and then you bake the cornbread on the bottom rack of your oven

with the pork for about 18 minutes. To test if it's ready, all you're going to

do is insert a little skewer into the centre of the cornbread and it should

come out clean or just a few moist crumbs. It's just out of the oven. Now

what you need to do is let it cool in the pan on a wire rack for about 10

minutes before turning it out. Right, and then you’ve got to cut it into

beautiful little pieces. In the meantime, let's make the barbecue sauce.

Beautiful. Now my pork has been roasting for about five and a half hours.

I've let it cool slightly. So I'm just going to pick it up here and pour off

some of that excess fat. About a third of a cup is what you're looking for.

Beautiful, you take that third of a cup of the drippings that came out of that

roast pork, add it to your pan, then you add your apple cider vinegar and

your brown sugar. Just a little pinch of chilli flakes, then the tomato paste.

And lastly, black pepper. This needs to simmer over a medium heat for

about 15 to 20 minutes. Give it a stir occasionally. And when it's ready, it'll

reduce to this delicious syrupy consistency. Season the sauce with salt

and keep it warm. So we've got just a couple of things to do left in this

recipe, we're going to make our slaw, we're going to cut our cornbread.

But first we need to crackle this pork. Because what we've done is we've

cooked it nice and slow. The bottom of this pork is perfectly cooked, but I

want to get that skin really crisp. So crank your oven to 230 degrees and

go back in for 20 minutes. While we wait for that pork to come out. This is

what you need to do for the slaw. Grab yourself a nice big bowl, toss the

capsicum, the Spanish onion. and then, of course, that beautiful cabbage.

Then you just toss those together. Then we grab that barbecue sauce and

we add a third of a cup to the slaw. That much. Prepare tongs, give it a

toss. And then you're gonna season it with salt and pepper. Oh, it's

happening. Ladies and gentlemen. Look at this beautiful crunchy

crackling. Now you get that just from that last little bit of cooking. Listen to

it. That's exactly what you want. Okay, so first of all, you're going to

remove that crackling from the pork. So let me pick it up here. Bring it

over. Look at that. It's literally falling apart you guys. Bring it on over. You

could even cut it straight down the centre. And look at this. You see how

that meat is literally fork tender, it's just gonna fall apart. So remove that

crackling just like this, straight off the top. Pick up that pork. All right, now

with this beautiful crackling, and just let me show it to you here, cut it into

sort of large pieces like this and, using a couple of forks, I'm just going to

go ahead and pull that pork apart. Now you know why they call it pulled

pork. You can see how tender it is the way it just easily falls apart. Now I

know this one cooks for a long period of time. But what I would always

suggest is double up on the quantity to a big old piece because this will

actually freeze very very well. Get a little bit of slaw, get that beautiful

pork, finish it off with that leftover barbecue sauce. That's a vinegar based

barbecue sauce, so it's got a little bit of acid to it to break through some of

that fatty pork. And then the last thing, of course, is the cornbread. So you

get this beautiful crunchy on the outside cornbread. You can cut it into

perfect squares. You can really tear it, you can do whatever you like. But

what I'm going to do is cut a piece and you'll see those beautiful pieces of

bacon through there. I'm going to literally cut myself a nice old piece like

this. If you want to you can cut it in half. Then you can load it all up. Some

of the pork, some of that beautiful slaw because it has a really nice

crunch, a little bit of a crackling. Don't forget about that, it’s the best part.

Oh yeah, enjoy!