I’ve been obsessing about Pork recently and researching loads of options and recipes on slow roast pulled pork. It started a few weeks back with watching the good food channel – one of the shows about diner food featured pulled pork sandwiches and it looked so delicious that it got me thinking. Then amazingly (karma or what) I received a gift of hand reared organic pork – fantastic, now I had no excuses but had to find the right recipe to make the best use of this amazing piece of piggy. If you are buying your cut of meat to make this then pork shoulder is just perfect and try and get it from a source you know. Farmers markets are great – I recently was at the Limerick Milk Market and it was a fantastic place. I have to warn that this recipe takes time (10 hours cooking in fact) but please don’t let that put you off, it’s not too complicated and it is the most amazing dish to serve for a lunch or dinner with a big gang or family get together. Everything can be brought to the table on platters and people can help themselves – A big platter of the melting pull apart pork, some delicious barbecue style gravy and the contrast of celeriac slaw and fried dill pickles make this a fab meal and you will have people talking about it for days.

I found the pork recipe I settled upon from here although I added 5 spice and celeriac salt to the dry rub just because I love the flavour of them. They worked really well I thought in the rub.Thanks to kevinandamanda for their really great recipe. I brined my Pork overnight on Friday, cooked it through the day on Saturday and then it was ready for the feast. I served it with a Barbecue sauce – usually left cold but I tweaked the recipe to turn it into a gravy and delicious it was too! I was just so happy watching my family tucking in, it made me feel like I had found my place in the world.

Fried Pickles
16oz jar of dill pickles
4 floz milk
1 cup gluten free flour
1 cup polenta
2oz poppy seeds
Salt and Pepper
Oil for frying – enough to cover a wide heavy bottomed pan to a depth of about 2″
Drain the pickles in a colander and spread on paper towels to drain completely
Combine the flours and poppy seeds
Place milk in a bowl
Heat the oil to about 170C
Tip the pickles in batches into the milk then into the flour mix tossing to coat
Add to the oil in batches and fry until crisp and brown – about 2 minutes
Drain on parchment paper and season with salt and pepper
Keep warm and repeat until you have cooked all the pickles

Barbecue Gravy
1 cup apple cider vinegar
1 cup ketchup
3 tbsp dark brown sugar
1 tbsp molasses
1 tsp salt
200ml veal stock
Deglazed juices from the roasting pan of the pork

In a deep saucepan combine all the ingredients apart from the stock and pork juices
Mix well to dissolve the sugar
Add the veal stock and roasting juices and bring to the boil
Taste, season and simmer gently until it has slightly thickened.

To serve
If you need to reheat the port, wrap in foil, ladle over some of the hot gravy and place in the oven for about 10 minutes to heat; otherwise Place the pulled pork onto a platter and ladle over some of the gravy to dress
Bring to the table for everyone to serve themselves with the rest of the barbecue sauce
Top with the fried dill pickles and serve with some celeriac slaw (recipe here) – amazing, I promise.

Thanks to http://www.kevinandamanda.com for their pulled pork recipe… ♥♥