Pulled Pork with BBQ Sauce

I've recently had to adopt a fairly strict meal planning regime - Sunday night is my night to cook slow and experiment. Tonight is Pulled Pork with BBQ sauce.

We're having American for dinner tonight

BBQ Sauce (from scratch)

I found it very interesting that a lot of recipes for BBQ sauce claim to be made "from scratch" but are just a mixture of ketchup, worcestershire sauce, soy sauce and brown sugar. Here is my attempt. It's spicy and smoky. I like that it has some texture from the pureed vegetables. I've used rum instead of bourbon because that's what was in my booze cupboard. 

THIS RECIPE from A Life From Scratch illustrates all the steps beautifully.

Makes 3 cups

1 red onion

1  diced carrot

1 mild red chilli

1 apple

1 kiwi fruit (because it was there)

1/2 capsicum (red or yellow)

1 tsp salt

1 tsp each minced garlic, ginger and hot chilli paste (sambal oeleck)

1/2 tsp each of dried thyme, oregano and basil

1/4 cup brown sugar

400g tinned tomato

1 tbsp treacle

3 tsp spanish sweet smoked paprika

2 tsp cocoa powder

1/4 cup apple cider vinegar

1 tsp mustard seed

1 bay leaf

1/4 tsp ground white pepper

90ml Bundaberg rum

1 tbsp vegetable oil

1 cup (250ml) water

Peel and dice the fruit and vegetables. Heat the oil in a medium saucepan over a low heat. Add the salt and gently sweat the fruit and vegetables until soft. Add the remaining ingredients and stir well. Bring to the boil, and then simmer until reduced by at least half. Remove the bay leaf and blend until smooth, then allow to simmer until thickened. I made this the day before so it had 24 hours to sit in the fridge and further develop the flavours. 

Pulled Pork

1.5kg Pork Neck (scotch fillet)

Spice Rub

• 2 tsp spanish smoked paprika
• 1/2 tsp white peppercorns
• 1/2 tsp of cumin seed
• 1 tsp fennel seed
• 1 tsp mustard seed
• pinch of salt
• 1 tsp dried oregano, basil and thyme
• 1 tsp garlic granules

Grind the spices in a spice grinder or mortar and pestle. Cut the pork neck into 2-3 large pieces so it will fit into your pot. I am using my pressure cooker. Rub the  meat all over with olive oil and the spice rub. Allow the meat to marinate for 4 hours or longer. Heat the oil in the pan and brown the meat, taking care to avoid burning the spices. Add 1 cup of water, and 1 cup of BBQ sauce. Mix well to coat the meat. Seal the pot and bring to pressure, then reduce the heat and cook for 1 hour. Remove from the heat and allow the pressure to slowly release. Carefully remove the meat from the pan and shred using two forks. It should be very tender.

To serve, cut a roll in half and add a generous portion of pulled pork, caramelised onions, warm bbq sauce and coleslaw. You will need a napkin :)

Hot Chillies in Syrup

The chilli harvest has begun. I have a wonderful variety of birds eye chilli. It is tough as nails, and my original plant has survived attacks by caterpillars and possums, not to mention neglect from me!  The chillies start off green, turn black, and then after 6-8 weeks turn red, often within 24 hours. This winter I gave all my chilli plants a severe pruning, and this year I have the biggest crop so far. There's no way we can eat so many chillies, so I am preserving them.

I'm using citric acid to provide the acidity required to preserve the mixture, but without adding the strong flavour that vinegar would - my husband detests vinegar and I want him to eat these!

Wear gloves when preparing chillies, and if you don't like them too hot, then remove all the seeds and the white membrane inside that they are attached to. This is where the capsaicin (the hotness) is concentrated.

Hot Chillies in Syrup

My jar was approx 225ml in volume.

300ml water
300g sugar
1/2 tsp citric acid
14 birds eye chillies, washed and sliced into rounds (with seeds removed from all but two of them)

Heat the water, sugar and citric acid in a sauce pan until the sugar is dissolved, then simmer for 5-10 minutes until the syrup has reduced by about half. Add the chillies and simmer for another 5 minutes, then pour into a hot sterilised jar. Seal the jar in a water bath for 10 minutes - the lid should pop in. Allow to cool and then leave for at least a week before opening. You could add some fresh ginger slices to this recipe for even more flavour.

Once opened, you can use the chillies to add flavour to dishes, as a garnish, or you can use the syrup to add a kick to dressings and sauces.

PS: I saved all the seeds from the chillies to dry out and plant next year!

One litre of milk: three tasty results

I've had an Easiyo yoghurt maker for a few years now. It's really very easy to make your own yoghurt from scratch, especially if you buy a starter culture from somewhere like Cheeselinks. This week though, I'm not just going to make a litre of yoghurt, I'm going to use that yoghurt to make some labne and, strange as it sounds, mustard!

Great for breakfast with honey

So the first step is to make the yoghurt. L has great instructions on how to do this on her blog. Get organic UHT milk if you can! I generally leave my yoghurt for 24 hours in the yoghurt canister, followed by at least 12 hours in the fridge before I use it - you get a nice thick yoghurt as a result.



The next step is to make some labne. This is a very simple style of fresh curd cheese, made by straining the whey out of some plain yoghurt. This is about 500g of plain yoghurt, with ½ tsp of salt mixed in for flavour, and to help the draining process. Place the yoghurt in a cloth-lined strainer over a jug or bowl, and leave overnight.

The result is a thick, smooth curd cheese. It has a texture similar to cream cheese but with a very light, tangy flavour. You can roll it into balls, coat with herbs and spices and store in oil, but I'm going to leave mine plain for now. It goes brilliantly with middle eastern flavours such as dried mint and sumac.


Up until now, I probably would have eaten the cheese and poured the whey down the sink, but I recently found this recipe* at Edible Aria for homemade mustard, which is handy, because I've run out! But whey? In mustard?
The whey from yoghurt is of course teeming with probiotic cultures - you can add it to preserved foods to help with the fermenting process, and to give them a healthy boost! Thank you internets yet again! This particular batch of mustard isn't fully organic, because I'm still in the process of converting my spice cupboard to organic. It already tastes and smells delicious - can't wait to eat it once it's had a chance to really develop the flavours (takes about a week). If I knew wholegrain mustard was this easy to make, I'd have stopped buying it years ago!

*I made a half-batch of the recipe, and it made about 1 cup of mustard.