Rubbed Chopped Pork with Beerbecue Sauce

"Good barbecue comes from experience, and experience, well, that comes from poor barbecue."
– Cousin Woodman (http://noexcusesbbq.com/bbq-quotes)

I love a good barbecue: chicken, pork, sometimes beef.  I have never tried making my own recipe for rub or sauce, but I had to today.  My phone was too small to read, and I didn't have all the ingredients; my computers would not load the page so I could print.  Thus, I have come up with my own rub by smelling the herbs and spices I have and then combining them into *hopefully* a decent rub.  I wanted a beer based barbecue sauce, so I looked up a "beerbecue" sauce recipe, but again, I didn't have all the ingredients.  So, I modified it.  The original can be found HERE.  I can say that it smells divine (even my 4 year old wanted to know what smelled so good!), but I haven't tried it yet. 

*Now that it is 11:15pm, and we ate supper 4 hours ago, I have tried it.  It tastes even better than it smells!

Rubbed Chopped Pork

1/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1/4 cup table salt
1/8 cup black pepper
1/8 cup paprika
1/2 Tb cumin
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp ground mustard
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground sage (this is easy to overdo, so watch it!)

1 Tb Spanish thyme

1/4 cup light honey

6 lb Boston Butt pork roast (I used 2-3 lb cuts with only a small bone, boneless is better!)

1. Mix all the dry ingredients together.  Add the honey, and stir.  Do not freak out when this is not a "sauce" consistency.  It is more like peanut butter cookie dough in texture.

2. Put your pork in a 9x13 or larger baking dish (I used the Pampered Chef Rectangle Baker #1338).  Put 1/4 of the rub on each cut of meat, and spread it out with your fingers.  This will not be easy, but stick with it, and spread it out as evenly as you can.  Flip the meat over and repeat.

3. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.  Roast the meat uncovered for 30 minutes.  Flip it over carefully, cover loosely with foil, and return it to the oven at 325 degrees F until a meat thermometer registers at least 145 degrees F in the thickest part of the meat.  I let mine go to 150 degrees F, but the government has changed the minimum cooking temps for food safety, and you can see those HERE.  It used to be 165 degrees F for pork, and my digital thermometer still has that as a default, so I used the medium rare beef setting and then double checked it with an old school pocket thermometer.

4. Once the pork is done, set it on the counter to rest, still in the pan and covered with foil.  When you have rested the meat, transfer it to a cutting board and either chop or shred the meat (I chop it because I think shredding it is too time consuming and my hands ache)

5. Strain out the solids from the liquid in the pan, and put the liquid in a small sauce pan.  Bring to a boil for 5 minutes, and then remove from heat.  Once it has cooled a little, soak up as much of the grease on top as you can with a paper towel, pour it over the meat to keep it moist.

6. When you are ready to eat, serve on buns (I like the sandwich thins) with slaw either on top of the meat or as a side dish.  You can either sauce the whole shebang, or you can put a little sauce on the top of each sandwich.

Beerbecue Sauce Mod

4 Tb margarine

1 tsp Kosher salt

2 tsp chili powder

1 tsp cocoa powder

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp ground mustard

1/2 tsp black pepper

1/2 tsp paprika

12 oz Guinness Stout

1/4 cup honey

1/4 cup balsamic vinegar

1-15 oz can tomato sauce

1. Melt butter. 

2. Add spices, stir into paste.

3. Add beer, honey, vinegar, tomato sauce.  Bring to a boil.

4. Reduce heat to simmer until thickened (or your pork is ready to be sauced).

5. Once thickened, remove from heat and cool completely before refrigerating.  If you are immediately going to put it on the pork and eat, there is no need to cool first.

Serving Suggestion

The liquid that cooked out of the pork has tremendous flavor.  This by itself is what my husband preferred on his sandwich, you just have to stir it up to make sure the meat is evenly coated.  It is a little salty for my taste, so I put the beerbecue sauce on my sandwich.  I put the meat on my sandwich thin, drizzled a little sauce on top, and ate my slaw on the side.  My mom put her slaw on the meat.  Either way is fine, just whatever floats your boat.