I am a firm believer in do-it-yourself. Recently frustrated with the exorbitant prices that Indian restaurants in this city charge, I decided to take my fate into my own hands. In other words, I went online, browsed through Chicken Makhani (my favorite Indian dish) recipes until I found one I liked, and then tried making it. It still needs some tinkering, but it is getting there, and is certainly more cost effective than paying for a $13 order from Baluchi's.
However, not everything that one can order in restaurants can be reproduced at home. This can truly be a problem when what you crave doesn't even seem to be available. A perfect example of this would be BBQ. I love BBQ. I truly do. I have a lot of family in the south, and whenever I visit, I make sure to order 2 quarts of pulled pork, which I proceed to consume over the following two days. If I had the choice, I would live in a giant tub of Buz and Ned's Pulled Pork. When I lived in New England, good pulled pork was hard to come by, and so, when I moved to New York, I was positive that my problems would be solved and my prayers would be answered. There had to be a restaurant somewhere in this city that makes a delicious pulled pork sandwich. Well, if that restaurant exists, I have yet to find it.
The problem is this. When it comes to the realm of pulled pork, two types exist: Vinegar Based and Tomato Based. Vinegar based hails from the Carolina's, is a little drier in texture and has a nice tang to it. Tomato based, on the other hand, can be found in places like Virgina, and I believe the Tennessee area (although don't quote me on that), and is meatier, spicier, and fuller, and packs a beautiful umami punch. In case you haven't guessed, I consider myself a disciple of the tomato based pork.
So really, the issue for me is not that it's impossible to find pulled pork in New York City. It just seems impossible to find tomato based pulled pork. I have been to RUB, Cowgirl, Dallas BBQ and The Hog Pit (to name a few). No luck. I have yet to find a good tomato based pulled pork. I even ordered takeout a couple nights ago from a place that I was optimistic about called Texas Rotisserie. The pulled pork platter (despite being a good deal), was a handful of pork chunks, swimming in a tub of BBQ sauce. Not only did I have difficult time classifying what I ate as honest-to-God pulled pork, I also found it impossible to classify as vinegar or tomato based. I know that there are many more BBQ places left to try in the city (Blue Smoke, Daisy May's, etc), but considering what I have seen so far, I am not optimistic. I may be able to find good BBQ, but its just not what I want.
Normally by this time I would have taken the "do-it-yourself" approach. I would hunt down a good pulled pork recipe and add it to my repertoire. The problem is, pulled pork is near impossible to make in the city. The biggest problem is the smoker. First of all, I don't own one. This is trouble. When I was younger, some friends of mine built one out of a couple of metal drums welded together. It worked quite well, and many backyard parties resulted. However, it took them a substantial sum of money to build it, and it took up quite a large amount of space. Those are two things that I don't have much of. Over the summer, my buddy Matt showed me the cold smoker he had built for curing bacon. Fairly ingenious, just a metal trash can with holes in the top, a rack in the middle for the bacon, and an electric heating element with a steel bowl filled with hickory chips on the bottom. Simple, yet effective, cheap, and small. The problem here is two fold. First of all, a cold smoke won't work. In order to properly smoke (not cure) a good hunk of pork, the needs to hover somewhere around 215 degrees (you're looking for an internal temp of around 180). There is no way that the small electric burner will create enough heat or that the metal trash can will insult that well. If I did get it to work, the second part of the problem arises. Where do I smoke the pork? My apartment is a definite no, I don't have a big enough hood to suck up all that smoke. The street is a no. New Yorkers get scared when they see smoking trash cans, and I would most definitely get arrested as a result. Finally, I could try the roof of my building, but I think I'd probably run into the same problem, except instead of getting arrested, I'd get evicted. So, I'm essentially at an impasse. Do-it-yourself is not an option here. Guess I'll just have to keep looking for a good BBQ joint.
No comments:
Post a Comment