The Pulled Pork Pie

Pulled Pork (or Carolina Barbecued Pork, or whatever you want to call it) is a tasty dish on its own. But when you make it, you tend to end up with way too much smoky pork meat to deal with. So I thought I'd try putting the leftovers into pies. And you know what? It's awesome. Here's the recipe.

For the pulled pork you will need:

About 2kg of pork (shoulder/butt) with the bone in

A couple of cups of BBQ sauce - check my recipe below.

Some cloves

You can also apply a dry rub to the pork for up to three days before cooking it if you're after extra flavour, and let's face it, who doesn't like extra flavour/

For the dry rub mix:

A tablespoon of black pepper

1/2 teaspoon of cayenne/chilli pepper

Tablespoon of ground coriander

Tablespoon of brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon of dried oregano or similar herb

2 Tablespoons of paprika (smoked is good here)

2-3 Tablespoons salt

2 teaspoons white pepper

Rub all over the pork, the wrap in cling film and leave in the fridge for 1-3 days.

When you're ready to cook the pork, place it in an oven at 150 degrees celcius, or a slow cooker on low, push in some cloves, add a cup or two of water (less if you're using the slow cooker option). Cook for 3-4 hours in the oven covered with tin foil, or up to 12 hours in the slow cooker. Pull it out and let it cool a bit before shredding the meat from the bone.

Whip up some barbecue sauce. This recipe is tasty:

Saute 1/2 cup of chopped onion and 2-3 chopped garlic cloves in some oil in a saucepan, until soft. Add:

1/2 cup cider vinegar

1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce

Tablespoon of mustard

2 Tablespoons of brown sugar

1-2 Tablespoons paprika

1 Tablespoon salt

1 or more teaspoons cayenne pepper

1 cup good quality tomato sauce (or a tin of chopped tomatoes and some tomato paste)

Cook it all for 15-20 minutes until thickened slightly, then add the pork meat and stir it in. You can keep cooking here for anything from 15 minutes or up to a few hours. All up I went for 16 hours, but you're probably not going to notice too much difference if you do a shorter time - the important part is slow cooking the pork until it's tender.

You can either stop here and just have a feed of pulled pork - try it in some fresh white rolls with coleslaw. Or, whip up some pastry, using your favourite recipe (I used this one here).

Roll it out thin - the key is not too thin, so it doesn't rip, but not too thick either. Somewhere between 2-4 millimetres if you're measuring...

Line your pie tin(s) and spoon in the filling - you don't want to cram it in too much because it's quite a heavy pie as it's basically just meat with a bit of sauce - so loosely does it.

Pop a pastry lid on and then into the oven it goes, at about 180 celcius for 20-25 minutes. You'll know it's done when the pastry is looking a nice golden colour.

This really works well if you have a feed of pork then use the leftovers for pie a couple of days later - otherwise it's a lot of effort to go through just for pies.

Next week I'm thinking about trying a breakfast pie out, so be sure to check back for that one.