Recipe: Pulled pork sliders

[beren_writes]

This is a recipe that came in the Times over the week or so they were doing recipe pullouts. I've changed one thing, and hand-wavied a couple of others, but other than that it's the same.

Ingredients
Feeds 4 (I used twice as much to feed six and have heaps left over)

• 8 mini bread rolls
  
• crunchy salady stuff (gherkins, lettuce, tomato, cucumber ... anything you like) sliced or chopped.
  
• mayonaise
  
• 600g boneless pork shoulder
  
• 1tsp ground cumin
  
• 1tsp chili flakes (I used a squirt of chili paste)
  
• 2tsp mild smoked paprika
  
• 2tsp oil for frying
  
• 125ml chicken stock
  
• 3 tbsp brown sugar
  
• juice and grated zest of 1 orange
  
• 2 tbsp cider vinegar (I didn't have any and used white vinegar and cider in equal measure)
  
• 2 cloves of garlic (crushed)
  
• 1 tbspn Worcestershire sauce
  
• 3/4 inch (2cm) ginger, sliced (I used lazy ginger from a pot and guessed :))
  
• 2 tbspns Tomato ketchup

Instructions

1. My pork shoulder came with skin on for crackling, so the first thing I did was take this off with a knife and set it aside. Make sure to leave some fat behind to render into the meat.
   
2. Take the cumin, chili and paprika and rub it in to the surface of the meat so it is fully covered.
   
3. Heat the oil in a pan and then brown the meat on all sides.
   
4. Mix up the stock, brown sugar, juice, zest, vinegar or (vinegar and cider), garlic, Worcestershire sauce, ginger and ketchup.
   
5. Now this is where I and the recipe differ - it said cook it all in a sauce pan on a low heat for 1.5hrs, but it was not rendered enough for my taste. So what I did the second time was pop it in the slow cooker at nine in the morning and left it all day (I would say five hrs min). If you don't have a slow cooker, a lidded casserole dish in a low oven or a backing dish sealed with foil in a low oven will do the same job (as long as there is something to make sure the juices all stay inside).
   
6. About an hour before you're ready to serve, salt the pork skin, put it on a baking tray and pop in a high oven. Keep an eye on it, but mine took the whole hour to render into lovely crackling which I chopped and served as a side.
   
7. Once cooked, take the meat out of the juices and shred it with a couple of forks.
   
8. Put the sauce in a saucepan through a sieve and reduce it until it is much thicker and just enough to cover the pork.
   
9. Throw the pork back in and mix.
   
10. Cut the rolls and then coat each side in mayonnaise.
    
11. Pop the pork on one half of each roll and top with whatever crunchy stuff you like. Each person should have two.

I served them with chips (french fries) and onion rings, but several people never got to those :).