Chipotle Pulled Pork With Ancho Chilli & SoCo Glaze

Pulled pork has become extremely popular in the last couple of years and I've become extremely addicted to it! When I was in Los Angeles last summer any time I went out to eat I'd get the pulled pork. 

You can buy plenty of 'bung in the oven' pulled pork packs in the supermarket but if you make your own you get double the flavour and double the product. For the same price you can get about 6-8 extra portions of homemade pulled pork compared to a supermarket pack. You can get a decent sized pork shoulder for about £8-10.

If you can't get Chipotle & Ancho chillies just use regular dried chillies, you can also leave the Southern Comfort out if you havent got any to hand/don't want to buy any. 

Ingredients

1 Pork boneless pork shoulder

4 Cloves of garlic

1 Bunch of fresh thyme

3 tbsp Light brown sugar

5 tbsp Smoked Paprika

2 Chipotle Chillies

1 Ancho Chilli

5 Red Onions

50ml Southern Comfort

5 tbsp Tomato Ketchup

1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce

Method

Start off by removing the rind from the pork shoulder. It won't matter if there's a small amount of fat left from taking this off as it will all render down while it's cooking and help keep the meat nice and juicy. If you can't do this your butcher will do it for you.

Don't throw away the rind as you can make some great crackling to snack on from it!

Crush the garlic, chop the chipotle chilli and strip the leaves off of half of your thyme stalks. And in a large bowl mix the garlic, paprika, sugar, chills and thyme leaves with enough olive oil to create a paste. Rub this all over the pork- make sure you cover every centimeter of the pork to get maximum flavour.

Leave this for at least an hour- it's even better if you do it 24-48 hours before you want to cook it.

Pre-heat your oven to 130 degrees celcius. Peel and halve the onions. In a large crock-pot or oven proof dish place the onions and remaining thyme stalks to form a base for the pork. Pour a cup of water in to stop any direct heat getting to the pork. Put the pork on top of the onions and thyme and cook for an hour without the lid on the pot. After that hour put the lid on and cook for a further 5 hours. Take out of the oven and shred the meat

Sieve the cooking juices and strain the fat. Add the onions back to the juice and blitz with a stick blender/food processor. Sieve again to thin out and add the southen comfort, tomato ketchup and worcestershire sauce. On a low heat reduce the juices by half and then stir into the meat. 

Serve the pork how you want! It's great on it's own in a bun but you can use it in salads or in potato skins.