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Thai-style Crispy Pork Shoulder with Kaffir Lime Chili Milk Sauce

Posted on | December 11, 2009 | 1 Comment

As with most recipes on this site, this dish started with a single ingredient and a dream. In this case, the ingredient in question was  Kaffir Lime Leaves. I bought them at my favorite spice store in the country – Savory Spice here in Colorado. Kaffir lime leaves, for those of you who aren’t familiar, provide a faint floral-herbal sweetness that acts as an incredible base for sauces. I’d bought a few recently (with no other intention in mind then having them on hand) and, after my move to Denver, opened the cupboard to see them staring back at me on a cold winter day. A mere two shelves up sat a can of coconut milk. I had my start. Coconut milk and kaffir lime sauce. I wanted some heat as well, though, so I looked to my growing chili collection and found Korean red chili threads, which I’ve found provide a subtle and balanced heat without much chili flavor. Perfect.

I now had the foundation of my sauce, but a sauce for what!? I began, as I always do, to turn circles in my kitchen – the confused pirouette of over abundant options.

I next spied my new crock pot, which actually wasn’t all that new. I’d received it as a Christmas gift a year prior. As I had no room in my then tiny galley kitchen, I gave it a place of honor at the top of my giant box collection within my storage closet. There it remained until my move to Denver, and a new plethora of cupboard space allowed me to work it in to my routine.

Crock pots as you all well know are intended for slow, often absentee cooking. I knew I wanted a protein, and so I ran through my options – what protein could I add to the crock pot for a day without having to worry about it? Pork, of course. And more specifically, pork shoulder. Pork shoulder is a versatile and affordable cut of meat. It contains a significant amount of marbling, which means that the meat remains most after long cooking times, and, because of this, it’s quite difficult to screw up. I recommend experimenting with it.

On to the two-day process, which, I promise, is less arduous then it sound as most of the time is spent waiting.

Day 1

I went to my local whole foods butcher about bought a three-pound bone in pork shoulder for $7.80.

When I arrived home, I whipped up a quick brine (recipe below) and added the pork shoulder (trimmed of some, but not all fat) to it for an overnight bath. At the same time, I began on my sauce. I wanted it to sit overnight to allow the subtler flavors of chili and the kaffir lime leave to come together and soften in the coconut milk.

I started off by rendering out the chili threads in a small bit of oil. The compound in chilis that make them hot is called capsaicin and its fat soluble, meaning one can conjure chili’s unique “chili-ness”  by cooking them in hot fat. I used a small amount of light vegetable oil so that I could crank the heat and not impart any one particular oil flavor into the mix. After about 30-45 seconds, I added two cloves of crushed (not minced) garlic to the fat and cooked for another 30-45 seconds until the garlic was just golden (at this point, remove the garlic. I added crushed cloves because they are much easier to remove and discard).

I then removed the pan from the heat and added in one can of coconut milk, 8 kaffir lime leaves, a teaspoon of ginger and two tablespoons of thai fish sauce (a must have for any kitchen – I’d put it in cereal if I could, and well, I may). I added this mixture back to the heat on a robust simmer for about five minutes and then removed again from the heat and let it come to room temperature. I poured this mixture into a bowl, covered with plastic wrap and let sit in the fridge overnight.

Day 2

The next morning, I removed the pork from the brine and patted dry with paper towel. I let the shoulder come up to room temperature and then added to the crock pot – fat side up- on medium cook and set the timer to seven hours. Yep, seven hours. This gave me plenty of time to do important things, like break down moving boxes in the snow-covered alley outside my new house.

Now, when cooking a pork shoulder that long, you’ll be amazed at how volume shrinks. Most of the fat will render to the bottom of the pot and the top will begin to take on nice browned color. Once the timer goes off, remove the shoulder from the pot, tent with foil on a cutting board, and let sit.

Turn your attention to the sauce. I removed it from the fridge, brought it up to a warm temperature in a sauce pan. Once it is warm, not hot, I removed and ran the mixture through a sieve, which ridded the sauce of the leaves, the chili threads, ginger and other matter. I was left with a silky smooth sauce, redolent of lime leaf, ginger and garlic, with light, nutty sweetness of coconut milk. I added this back to the sauce pan on simmer to await it’s date with the pork shoulder.

At this point, the pork shoulder was rested adequately. I removed the foil, grabbed a fork and began to pull gently on the meat, in essence shredding it. Add the shredded pork to a plate and set aside.

Heat vegetable oil in a pan until it’s quite hot and then, in batches, add the shredded pork. The hot fat in the pan, mixed with the natural fat of the pork shoulder will brown and crisp the meat almost instantly. You don’t want to burn it, so watch it closely and work quickly to move through all the shredded meat.

This, to me, is the beauty of pork shoulder. In it’s first life as a slow cooked protein, it was tender and quite juicy, with a full-fat mouth feel. This would be perfect with any starchy, fall vegetables, and indeed it is (try it with roasted sweet potatoes).

However, simply shredding the pork and adding it to the pan provides an entirely new dish. A great deal of the fat is cooked off in the crisping, and the browned shreds take on a smokier flavor.

To finish off the dish, I added cooked white jasmine rice to a ramekin and upended it. I topped the rice with the shredded pork, the Kaffir Chili Milk Sauce, roasted red and yellow peppers and leafy cilantro. Now, for those of you who like more significant heat in your food, you may want to experiment with a different pepper. Korean chili threads are warm, not hot – and warm was exactly the level I was looking for here. You might try a thai green or red chili to bring this up to sweat-on-your-brow heat, but be sure not to let the vegetale or smoky chili flavors to overwhelm the kaffir lime or ginger, which provide incredible balance across the palate.

Lastly, and yet another beautiful aspect of this dish, it would work quite well as a sandwhich. Remove the rice and add these same ingredients to a soft BAP roll, top up your cilantro and voila, you’ve got a fabulous lunch.

Enjoy

Brine Recipe

• 10 cups of water
• 1 cup of kosher salt
• 1 1/4 cup of brown sugar
• 1 whole head of garlic, mash the cloves with the flat side of a knife
• 4 crushed bay leaves
• 1 tablespoon of whole black peppercorns

Combine ingredients in a large pot and bring to a low boil. Remove from heat, let cool to room temperature (I sometimes use ice cubes. Don’t, however, be tempted to put a hot brine in the fridge or freezer, it will adversely affect the temperature of those respective spaces, which can damage your food).
Kaffir Lime Chili Milk Sauce

• 1 can of coconut milk
• 8 kaffir lime leaves
• 2 heaping tablespoons of korean chili threads
• 2 cloves garlic, smashed but in tact
• 1 teaspoon ginger
• 2 tablespoons fish sauce

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