TL;DR: Will oven pulled pork work with “pork shoulder country style ribs boneless” from Costco instead of a full pork shoulder? How much less cooking time will they take?
Wife went to Costco, and they either had like 16 pound pork shoulders, which are way too big, or these “pork shoulder country style ribs boneless.” She asked the butcher and they are just pork shoulders that are cut up into strips, so she got 6.33 pounds.
https://imgur.com/a/xohcTdM
I wanted to make Kenji’s oven pulled pork:
I thought about tying them together with butcher’s twine, but ultimately decided to just add the dry rub and brown the pieces like in the video. I had to sear the meat in two batches, then just added it all back into my Dutch oven and put it in the oven at 300 F.
Now I am wondering how this will affect the cooking time? I assume smaller pieces means less time? I set a timer for 2 hours to check, but any ideas?
(I looked at Kenji’s carnitas video, and that is chunks of pork shoulder in a cast iron pan at 275 F, cooked for 3.5 hours. I get that it’s a different method, as that is lower temp and cooked in fat, but it was also a not so scientific “it’s done when the meat is tender and starts to pull apart and shred easily”)
Thanks!
by shoesbetch
2 Comments
Smaller pieces will cook faster than a whole shoulder. I think you made the right call in keeping the pieces separate…more surface area exposed to the maillard reaction means more flavor.
For future reference the Costco pork shoulders are actually two per package, so there would have been two shoulders at around 8 lbs each rather than one monster 16 lb one.
I cook a version of that recipe with bone in country style ribs and it turns out incredible. I cook them about 2 hours at 300°