« Great Belgian Great Recipes and Waffles | Home | Seafood with Fresh Red Snapper »
Pulled Pork Crockpot Recipes That Will Have You Whistling Dixie
By Susanne Myers | December 29, 2009
Sure, there are more hotly debated subjects than this, but not by much. If you’ve been looking for pulled pork crockpot recipes, you may be a bit confused as to what exactly is a Carolina style sandwich versus a Memphis style sandwich. And what about Texas weighing in on a “Memphis Style” sandwich. Doesn’t Texas have one of their own? Then we hear from Florida, Mississippi, and Alabama each claiming their own original version, but they all seem vaguely familiar.
What most everyone can agree on is that no one agrees which style of sandwich truly belongs to which region. Comparing hundreds of pulled pork crockpot recipes doesn’t help much either. For every barbecue sauce on the market there is at least one recipe. For every variation of dry rubs you can find, there are that many more methods and ingredients for cooking a pulled pork sandwich. Here are just a few common methods for cooking and serving this sandwich that seems to be everyone’s hometown original!
Vinegar – Mixing this sour with a sweet of some sort is essential for any good barbecue sauce. However, several regions and states claim this ingredient as the quintessential ingredient that differentiates their pulled pork sandwich from any other.
Brown Sugar – In order to make a homemade barbecue sauce you need something sweet. Brown sugar is a good choice and is actually used in many recipes for both barbecue sauce and dry rubs. As a matter of fact, there are places that swear by using just brown sugar mixed with vinegar and a dash of cumin to season the pork. Some claim that this is strictly a South Carolina recipe, but I’ve heard folks claim that this simple recipe could only come from a place like Florida.
Dry Rubs – Even though dry rubs have been around forever, and used in all regions of the country, a dry rub used for these pork sandwiches contains certain standard ingredients. You’ll basically need cayenne pepper, black pepper, salt, and paprika. Anything added after that is your own touch. Different regions of the country can lay claim to using only dry rubs, never liquid barbecue sauce, but this method is so widespread that it seems impossible to pin down the original creator. Then of course you can use both a dry rub and barbecue sauce, so it just gets more confusing.
Condiments – Barbecue sauce as a condiment is widely regarded as a standard in every region. Even when the pulled pork never gets a dose of barbecue sauce mixed in with it, there is usually a bottle on the table. You’ll also usually find some pepper vinegar, some mustard, and even a little Tabasco in most regions. What you’ll hopefully never find is ketchup on the table. That would not go over well in any region. However, most everyone believes that adding cole slaw on top of your sandwich is most decidedly a Memphis touch.
Cooking Methods – It’s not easy to pin down a cooking method. Grilling, smoking, roasting, or braising are not uncommon to any region. Of course, using your slow cooker isn’t an ancient method to cook meat, so the origin of this method is obviously widespread. But smoky pits or slow roasting would have been the preferred method by many of our settlers around the countryside, and now their ancestors may still use those exact same methods. It’s still hard to prove any method belongs to any particular region. Even though Memphis is famous for their smoky grilling pits, you’ll find those same pits all around the south.
Whether you’re sitting in Memphis reading this, or in Florida, or Mississippi, you’ve probably already dismissed all this nonsense about any pulled pork crockpot recipes that claim they are a certain region’s style. All I can say is that no matter where you live, if your Granddaddy made the best pulled pork sandwich ever, then that’s YOUR official recipe and don’t let anybody take that away from you!
Try your hand at some new slow cooker pulled pork sandwich recipes to change your traditional sandwich into something unexpected, and delicious! Your family will be hooked on slowcooker cooking after they get a taste of your new and improved recipe!
Topics: Recipes | No Comments »