Sous Vide Barbecue Pulled Pork Shoulder Recipe
"Pull-apart-tender pork with great bark and smoky flavor, time after time. [Photographs: J. Kenji López-Alt] Don't get me wrong. I like a good slow-smoked, true barbecue pork shoulder just as much as the next guy, even with all of the babysitting (read: beer-drinking) that smoking one the traditional way requires. In fact, I probably like the process way more than the next guy. Still, there are times when we want things a little more streamlined, a little more hands-off, a little more reliable, whether it's because we're getting ready for a big party and don't want to risk screwing up that pork, or because we're busy weekday workers who still want to be able to come home and pull off a batch of pulled pork before bedtime. Not only that, but using a sous vide cooker allows you to achieve textures you can't get with traditional cooking methods. Who knows—we may even want to cook sous vide pulled pork just because we have sous vide cookers and we must play with them. I know the feeling...."