Indian Pulled Pork Sandwiches

Saturday, September 4, 2010
Indian BBQ Pulled Pork Sandwich

One word: Yummmmmmmm.

My greatest hurdle of late has been weening myself off of the recipe book dependence. I think the most liberating thing for a home chef is knowing enough tricks to intuit a recipe without looking at the book! It boils down to (pun intended) knowing what combination of ingredients work; you are confident enough in your culinary learning that you can guess what will taste good. The most intimidating arena for the more-than-novice-but-less-than-expert cook, however, is fusion food. I know that ginger/garlic/onion/red chili powder/cumin/coriander is a no-fail combo in Indian cooking. But throw it in with bbq sauce, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, and beer?! What's gonna happen? Well I know Indian spices always complement tomato. BBQ sauce is a sort of derivative of tomato (esp. if you have ketchup in there). Moreover, if it works in quesadillas with adobo spices--like smoked chili powder, cumin, onion/garlic powder, paprika...maybe it will work with Indian spices, like cumin/coriander/dry red chili powder. It seemed like there would be enough overlap for the combination to work. A total crap shoot, but it's only by being a little eccentric with these dishes, will I develop something great and unique. And by experimenting, I can take it even further and try other fusions too. Spices are pretty global after all. Cumin, for example, is used abundantly in Indian, Latin, and Middle Eastern cuisines. Chili powder of course, is incredibly diverse; people sun-dry chilis all over the world for fantastic smoky flavor in dishes. Types of chili vary by climate, so you get such a variety of flavors for what is essentially the same element. When I visit India, my grandmother always has hundreds red chilis laid out on a sheet, drying on the roof.

The combination rocks. We had the pulled pork sandwiches, with some chocolate cake I baked from scratch (including icing), and some sweet iced tea! It was totally southern, (with a little Indian fusion).

The recipe for the Indian pulled pork is as follows:

Ingredients:
1 bottle of light beer (anything you have in the fridge. I used Red Stripe)
2 tbsp. papaya nectar or canned papaya hand-crushed to equal 2 tbsp.
1/4 cup ketchup
1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
1 cup good store-bought or homemade BBQ sauce
1 tbsp. cumin seeds
1 tbsp. coriander seeds
3 dry red chilis
About 2 lbs. of pork tenderloin or 4 pork chops
1 onion roughly chopped
2 generous rounded tbsp. of roughly chopped garlic
1-2 tbsp. roughly chopped ginger
oil for frying
salt to taste
1 tsp. red chili powder
hamburger buns or whatever bread you like to eat with pulled pork
garnish with onions and chopped green chili if desired

Utensils needed:
spice grinder, blender, 2 saute pans, 1 big pot, 2 forks for pulling the pork

Pour the beer, papaya, ketchup, Worcestershire and bbq sauce into a big pot and cook on medium heat until well mixed and semi-boiling. In another pan, heat oil and saute onions, garlic, and ginger (OGG) until onions turn translucent. The more caramelized the OGG, the better. In another small pan, roast dry red chilis, cumin, and coriander seeds (meaning NO OIL), until they smell smoky and hot, and then put into a spice grinder. Grind the roasted spices and add 2 tbsp. of the grounds to the bbq sauce, reserving the remaining spice mixture for later. If your OGG are cooked, then put them into the blender and blend into a paste, oil and all. I know I said in an earlier post that I don't generally make pastes, but this is the exception, because there's already plenty of texture in pulled pork, and I like the sauce to be smooth, so the main texture comes from the meat.

Add the OGG paste to the bbq sauce. Keep that going on medium-high heat so it gets blended and cooked well. Chop the pork chops in half or so and add to the bbq sauce pan. Turn heat to medium-low and cover. Slow cook the pork for 40 minutes. After slow cooking is done pull out the pork chops and lay them onto your cutting board or a clean stain-proof surface. At this point, with your 2 forks, fork apart the pork (which should be tender enough to break apart), and pull it into linear pieces. Try to fork it into as thin as pieces as you can.



Once all the pork is forked apart, add the forked pork back to the bbq sauce. Stir and incorporate the pork back into the sauce until well-coated. Cook back on medium heat for about 10 minutes. In the same pan in which you fried the OGG, add a little oil and fry the remaining ground spices until aromatic. Add the fried spices to the pork. Add the additional tsp. of red chili powder, and salt to taste. Let cook for another 5 minutes and voila!



You can toast your buns or eat them at room temp. After toasting the buns (which we did), scoop a heaping amount of the pork onto your bun. Chop a little white onion and a green chili and put it on top of the pork. Enjoy.