Recipe: Pulled pork

There are many different spice rubs and sauce recipes. Here we have a pot-cooked version which includes all the original flavours. Photo / Michael Craig

This long-cooked pork is popping up on menus all over town. Traditionally the pork is cooked long and slow in a smoker, then shredded or "pulled" and mixed with barbecue sauce. This pot-cooked version replicates the original.

1 Make a rub with 2 tsp each of chilli powder, paprika, ground cumin, ground coriander and a teaspoon of cayenne pepper.

2 Smother a piece of pork shoulder (around 1 kg) with this and massage it well into the meat.

3 Sit the meat in a dish and leave uncovered in the fridge overnight.

4 Make a makeshift smoker by getting an old baking dish and sitting a cake rack in it. Sprinkle some smoking dust into the base of the tray, sit the pork on the rack and seal it all with a couple of layers of tinfoil. Sit this on a flame to start the sawdust smoking, about 10 minutes. Then put the dish into a medium oven and leave to "smoke "for 30 minutes.

5 Remove the dish from the oven, take off the foil and put the meat into an ovenproof pot that has a good fitting lid.

6 Add 2 cups of water, put on the lid and return to the oven at 150C, for at least 3 hours. By then the pork should be falling apart and easily shredded. If not keep cooking until it is.

7 Shred the pork. Pulling it by hand is the easiest way.

8 Mix a cup of tomato sauce with a cup of barbecue sauce and then mix this all through the meat.

Serve in a roll.

Tip: There are many different spice rub recipes and complex barbecue sauce recipes but this simple version will get you started.