So It's Bekah's Pulled Pork Now

This is fabulous (but you already knew that). Before I was hospitalized a year ago, one of my favourite restaurants was Hogs on The Hill near the University of Maryland campus. And one of their locally famous specialties was pulled pork – I could not get enough of the stuff, and often ordered extra to bring home and freeze. Of course, my low-salt diet put the brakes on my visiting that fine establishment. I had my local butcher call me when he got a fresh pig, and he cut me a huge pork butt from it. As soon as I got it home, I thought I heard it still oinking, so I took my wee butcher knife and stabbed it all over, just to make sure that it was dead. As I was rubbing it with your spice mixture (duplicated faithfully except for salt substitution) I poked some of the mix deep into the wounds that I had inflicted. Then, after overnight resting and subsequent re-rubbing, I slow-roasted it at 250°F for close to 9 hours. The beast was so tender that it almost “pulled” itself and fell into chunks as I was trying to lift it out of the roasting pan. The outside was almost charred, and yet it was glistening moist and had me nibbling on the burned bits as I was completing the “pulling” process. Your sauce was amazing. Because I had a large cut of meat to begin with, I had to make a second batch of sauce in order to have enough to be able to serve additional sauce. Even prior to making your sauce recipe, I have found myself using dates more and more in other savoury sauces – they really add oomph to it. My wife, who previously disliked most pork dishes, wanted me to make a point of awarding your recipe a whole bunch of frequent flier miles. She took pulled pork sandwiches to work for lunch 3 days in a row.

Since we don't eat pork I made Pulled Cow. It's really the rub and sauce that are the stars of this show! I used a dark brown sugar instead of the turbinado sugar, and double the quantity of minced dates. Heaven! I served this with mashed potatoes and my kids were practically licking their plates clean! My BH had 2 1/2 helpings and had to be rolled from the table. I think this would work well with almost any kind of meat. Thanks, Mean Chef, this has already started to make the rounds in my community!

Absolutely awesome! So tender, so juicy, so delicious! The sauce is a little sweet and very tasty - the pork is indescribable. Everyone raved over this! I think I love you, MEANCHEF!

Fantastic method and a great rub. With just the two of us it's hard to justify cooking a whole Boston Butt, so I did a 2 lb loil roast with the same method. I brined the meat in 1/2 cup of salt, 1 cup of sugar and 1 qt of cold water for 2 hrs, let the rub sit on for 4 hrs. I didn't bring it up to room temperature before putting it in the oven. It cooked for 4.5 hrs to an internal temperature of 198 degrees. It was fall-apart tender with tons of flavor! Thanks MC for a terrific recipe.

A rave for this one! I join the others in rating this just great. I used the recipe exactly….except for two things. My market had thick sliced port butt on sale and since it was half the price of their whole butt I opted to use that. I was somewhat concerned about the amount of spice, since I had so much more surface to rub. But, not to fear, it was wonderful. My thick chops were wonderful even before the pulling and the saucing. Also, I forgot to buy a tomato and didn’t want to open the extra large can I had, so I put in a squeeze of tomato paste from a tube I keep in the fridge for just such emergencies.