Pulled Pork Rolls for a Boxing Day Crowd

Serves 10. Prep 15 minutes. Cook 6 hours, 5 of them unattended.

1. Heat the oven to 150 degrees, or 130 fan.
2. Pat the pork dry and rub it with the olive oil.
3. Brown the shoulder on every side in a heavy lidded casserole over a high heat, about 10 minutes.
4. Whisk the sauce mix, honey and water together in a jug until no lumps are left.
5. Pour it over the pork, bring it to a simmer and put the lid on.
6. Cook in the oven for 5 hours, turning the joint over once at the halfway point.
7. Take the lid off and cook for a final hour so the sauce reduces and darkens around the meat.
8. Lift the pork onto a board and pull it apart with two forks, discarding any lumps of fat as you go.
9. Return the meat to the pan and turn it through the sauce until every strand is coated.
10. Toss the cabbage and carrot with the mayonnaise, vinegar and seasoning no more than 30 minutes before serving.
11. Fill each roll with pork, then slaw, then pickles, and put the sauces and the chilli jam on the table for people to finish their own.

What the sachet is doing

The Pig Easy is a dry mix built on brown sugar, dried tomato and dried onion, with 5 per cent smoked paprika, 2 per cent crushed chipotle chillies, smoked salt, malt vinegar powder, yeast extract, fennel and a little xanthan gum. The whole sauce is in that list: sweetness, acidity, smoke, chilli and a thickener so it clings to shredded meat instead of running off. The fennel is the unusual one, and it is what lifts the finished pork against the smoke.

The honey is not optional and it is not just sweetness. Six hours of wet cooking dilutes everything, so the honey brings the sauce back up to a glaze in the final uncovered hour. Add it at the start, not the end, or it sits on top as a sticky layer rather than joining in.

The Gordon Rhodes mixes all work this way. For beef instead, the Sticky Brisket of Beef Without The Grief mix takes a 2kg piece of chuck on the same timings, and the rest of the shelf is in sauces and mixes.

How this differs from the hot roast

This is not the Christmas Day joint. Slow roast pork with an apple and fennel chutney glaze is the one with crackling, carved at the table and eaten hot. This is the opposite in every way that matters: no crackling, no carving, no plates. Cook the first on the 25th and the second on the 26th and they will not feel like one meal twice.

Cooked pork keeps three days in the fridge in its own sauce and freezes for three months in portions. Reheat in a covered pan with a splash of water, not the microwave, which dries the strands out. The second round is in Christmas leftovers on Boxing Day, the jars are in condiments and the wider spread is in festive entertaining.

Common questions

How much pulled pork per person for a crowd?

Allow 250g of raw boneless shoulder per person, which is about 150g of cooked meat once fat and moisture are gone. A shoulder loses roughly a third of its weight over six hours, so 2.5kg raw gives about 1.6kg of shredded pork and fills ten rolls with a little spare. If the pork is one of several things on the table, drop to 150g raw a head. Buying bone in, add about 20 per cent to the raw weight.

Can you cook pulled pork the day before?

Yes, and it is better for it. Cook it fully, shred it, turn it through the sauce and cool it quickly, then refrigerate overnight in a covered container. The strands take up more sauce than they would on the day. Reheat gently in a covered pan or a low oven with a splash of water until steaming through. Cooking ahead also puts the six hour block on a day when you are not cooking everything else.

What cut of pork shreds best?

Shoulder, sold as boneless pork shoulder or Boston butt. It is a hard working muscle with a lot of connective tissue, and that tissue breaks down into gelatine over a long, low, wet cook, which is what makes the meat both moist and easy to pull apart. Leg is far too lean and goes stringy no matter how long you cook it. Belly has the fat but not the structure, and leaves you with a greasy pan.