Guinness Pulled Pork on Mash (adapted from Felicitas Pizarro's Recipe)

Pork is a common meat used in Chinese cooking. I think it is indeed safe to say Chinese love their pork dishes. Pork with Yam, Pork with Preserved Vegetables, Suckling Pork etc.

Well, not only the Chinese appreciate pork dishes. Pork is well appreciated and used widely in the West as well. When I was studying in the UK, came across this amazing pork sandwich, a pulled pork sandwich. Absolutely loved it. Even when Jo and I were in San Francisco a few years back, I remember having pulled pork on rice during one of our lunch stops as well. Just superb.

Pulled pork is a method of cooking pork (usually tougher cuts) slowly until they become tender and easily pulled away / easily broken from each other. Hence the term "pulled". Different regions in the world have they own way of making pulled pork.

Always wondered how to make this dish. Never really looked into it (being a little bit of a lazy bump), until one day I saw the recipe on my YouTube side bar as I was watching some other cooking related videos. It was a video by Felicitas Pizarro. An Argentinean chef and sommeliar. Do check her YouTube channel out here.

My initial reaction was "Wow". I didn't know pulled pork is so simple to make. Watched the video several times to familiarise with the ingredients and method of cooking and off to the kitchen I went. (Actually took me another 2 weeks to finally got myself together to getting the ingredients and trying this dish out. Haha.)

I tweeted the recipe a little, just a add a bit more "garlic-ky" flavour and spiciness to the pulled pork. Here the breakdown of the recipe below:

Ingredients:

1 kg mixed cut of Pork (We used pork steak and pork shoulder)

6 cloves of garlic

1 large leek (cut into rings/circle)

1 onion (Diced finely)

2 carrots (cut into circles/cut across)

3 Padi Chilies (seeds removed)

Salt (to taste + marinade)

Pepper (to taste + marinade)

2 tablespoon of Honey

4 tablespoon of Soy Sauce

3 tablespoon of Wholegrain Mustard

1 tablespoon of Brown Sugar

1 600ml bottle of Guinness Stout

Olive Oil

Method

First, season the pork with salt and pepper and place aside. In a heated pot, pour in about 3 tablespoons of olive oil. On a medium high heat, lightly brown your pork cutlets. Once they have that golden brown colour, sauté the diced onions, leeks, carrots and garlic until the leeks and onions are soft.

Once they are soft, throw in the padi chilli and mix. Into the pot, pour in 4 tablespoons of soy sauce, 2 tablespoons of honey, 3 tablespoons of wholegrain mustard and 1 tablespoon of brown sugar. Mix thoroughly and pour in your 600ml of stout. In this recipe, I used Guinness Foreign Extra. Stir the mixture around to ensure that they are well mixed. Put the lid back on and cook it at medium heat for 2 hours.

You can check your pot on a 30 minute basis to ensure the heat is not too strong that it dried up your stout. After 2 hours, remove the lid and check on the meat, they should break and pull away from each other easier. Here are more snapshots:

Jo and I loved how the pulled pork turned out. We had ours with some homemade mash potato I made alongside this dish. Will post about that some other day. For now, enjoy and thanks for reading guys.