I noticed a package wrapped in white paper in the meat department of a Save Mart supermarket. What could be more mysterious in a meat product not wrapped in plastic? It turned out to be spiced pork double wrapped in heavy paper and tied with a string. The instructions were place the package in a 250 degree oven and cook for eight hours. Now there’s a recipe I can follow!

In the interests of science and oven space, I wrapped a separate chunk of pork, with spices, in aluminum foil to cook at the same time. Perhaps the eight hour technique didn’t require prepackaged magic. Eight hours later:

What we are making here is pulled pork, traditional prepared as barbecue by similar slow cooking. The pork is so tender it can shredded with a fork. It can be served in a sandwich or in tacos or burritos.

The paper wrapped products had inch-and-a-half cubes coated with commercial “Pappy’s 50% Less Salt” seasoning. I tried a jar of Pappy’s once before, and thought that even with 50% less salt, it still had too much salt. However, that depends upon how much one uses. We do manage to to use pure salt without necessarily having too much salt. The package product didn’t use too much, so it was fine.

My test pork was a single piece about two and a half inches square. I seasoned in with a mixture of paprika, a little chile powder, and ground allspice. Oh, and salt. I added some dried rosemary as a maybe-not-so-inspire idea of making in more interesting.

Pulled pork has a chronic problem of getting dry. Barbecue chefs have all manner of marinades, juice baths, and injector treatments to fight that tendency. Neither of my package experiments was especially juicy, but the store-bought one was slightly better. I attribute that to it’s having more fat. Since pulled pork is eaten with some sort of sauce or other squishy accompaniment, it is acceptable if it’s a little dry.

I preferred my herbal enhanced spice mixture to the Pappy’s, but not by a wide margin. Clearly, there is the potential for many eight-hour experiments.

The foil packaging seemed to be equivalent to the paper. The low temperature avoid burning the spices, and the lengthy cooking would make just about anything edible easily shredded.

The method is foolproof. The focus is on the ingredients.