Sunday, September 28, 2008

Pulled BBQ Pork(less)

I love my lunch. It's almost always the highlight of my day when I'm at school, plus on Mondays I get to share it with Andrew. It's my weekly ritual, and gives me the chance to try out recipes not only on myself but on other, non-vegan foodies too.

It's recipes like today's that make me thank God for fellow vegan's inventions! Chow Vegan originally wrote about this slow cooked, pulled BBQ-style recipe back in May, and what caught my eye was that it was vegan, but didn't use a soy or "wheat meat" base to it. Instead, Chow uses unripe jackfruit for the base of the recipe - something I'd never seen nor heard of! Canned green jackfruit in brine is the young and unripe version of this world's largest fruit, and what you want for this recipe (not the ripe kind you see in with the canned fruit!). In India and Southeast Asia, it’s used like a vegetable, but definitely earns the name “vegetable meat”.

I have to agree with Chow that this recipe not only takes a while to cook (my slow cooker is big and tends to burn small amounts of food when used on HI, so I cooked it on LOW for 3 hours) but also needs time to sit and marinate afterwards. Making it a day ahead of time wasn't a problem for me, since I knew I was probably not going to be bringing it for lunch until tomorrow or so. The flavour immediately after cooking isn't the greatest, but tasting it that night (about 6 hours after pulling it out of the cooker) yielded promising results. The texture is definitely "pulled porky", and the taste is equally delicious. Of course, I made my own tweaks to the recipe, so I'm posting my variant here.

Due to the nature of this recipe, I'm submitting this low n' slow-cooked recipe to the Low and Slow event hosted by The Constables' Larder, and also to Ruth's event Bookmarked Recipes

Pulled BBQ Baby Jackfruit
Serves 2
4 cloves garlic, minced (I microplaned mine)
1 tsp grated ginger root
1/4 cup water
20 oz green jackfruit (in brine or water), drained and rinsed well, squeezed of extra water
pinch ground chipotle pepper
1/4 tsp liquid smoke (optional, I used hickory flavour)
1/2 tsp fine salt
1/2 cup low-sugar BBQ sauce
1/4 cup water

  1. Heat a non-stick pan over medium-high heat.
  2. Add garlic, ginger and water and sauté for 1-2 minutes, until liquid evaporates.
  3. Add the jackfruit, chipotle, liquid smoke and salt.
  4. Cook, stirring, for 4-5 minutes longer.
  5. Transfer the pan mixture to a slow cooker, add the BBQ sauce and water, and toss well.
  6. Cook on HI for 1 hour (or LOW for 2-3 hours), stirring every 15-20 minutes and adding more water as needed.
  7. The jackfruit should be fork tender.
  8. Take the jackfruit out of the cooker and shred.
  9. Transfer to a covered container and allow to sit in the refrigerator 12 hours before reheating and serving.
Amount Per Serving
Calories: 123.3
Total Fat: 0.0 g
Cholesterol: 0.0 mg
Sodium: 1,666.2 mg
Total Carbs: 26.7 g
Dietary Fiber: 5.5 g
Protein: 3.4 g

3 comments :

  1. i don't have a slow cooker...how do you think i could adapt the recipe without it?

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  2. This sounds so fun! I love pulled pork but am always interested in new veg recipes. I love that there isn't any highly processed fake meat in this. A couple of markets here carry jackfruit but I have no idea how to tell if it's ripe or not. This will require some research and searching but I have to try it!

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  3. Are you sure you've got the sodium there right? Because you've got 120 calories and 1,600 mg sodium (which is between 1/3 and 1/2 of your daily sodium allowance).

    Other than that, it sounds yummy ... except that I've never had pulled pork, so don't have an idea what it's supposed to be imitating. :)

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Thanks for the feedback!