All about beer
Beer Recommendations brown ales and amber ales (avoid aggressively hopped ones) porter ales and stouts (if making Guinness pulled pork (or using other Irish stout) you might want to increase the brown sugar in the rub just so that you can counter the bitterness of the roasted barley in the grain bills of Irish stout)
Your liquid should not cover your pork in the slow cooker : it should only come up about a quarter of the way up the sides. The pork will make more liquid as it cooks, and you need to leave room for that. And 10 hours later, this huge hunk of meat is tender and ready.
But to the general question of using beer in a crock pot , it’s not a problem if the type and amount of beer are appropriate to the recipe.
Why is meat still tough in the slow cooker ? It’s because you haven’t let the collagen break down. Extend the cook time, make sure there’s enough liquid and keep an eye on the dish.
Both come from the shoulder of the pig , but pork butt is higher on the foreleg, while pork shoulder is farther down. As relatively tough and fatty cuts, both benefit from long, slow cooking methods such as roasting, stewing, and braising. But the cuts are different enough that we generally prefer pork butt .
Beer not only gently tenderizes the meat, but it also creates another layer of flavor that in combination with the other spices makes it very juicy and delicious. Spices that go well with port are a must in a pork chop marinade.
The pork shoulder tends to float, and you want to make sure it is evenly cooked . Except for the temperature change and flipping the pork shoulder there is not a lot to do , and in all honesty, you could just set it on low and cook for 8–10 hours and be fine (especially if you needed to head to work for the day).
The pork is done cooking when the meat falls away easily with a fork. It’s pretty hard to overcook a pork shoulder when using this method – at least, as long as the moisture is maintained – but once the meat starts to become tender, keep an eye on it, as the texture can become mushy if it cooks too long .
It does not require that you add liquid , or that you cover it. It does require, however, that you roast it at a lower temperature than roasting using moist heat. You can do this by roasting , broiling, or barbecuing.
Playing it Safe. There are some always-safe options when choosing your beer. Relatively lighter ales (pale ale, amber, or light brown ale ) will complement nearly all beer-recipes and so are a great default choice. That said, it’s also safe to stay away from IPAs ( India Pale Ales ) in your cooking.
The LOW setting takes longer than the HIGH setting. Once that temperature is hit, the appliance stabilizes at that temperature to allow for the ingredients to be cooked . This means most recipes can be cooked on either setting. Or if a recipe calls for eight hours on HIGH , it can be cooked for up to 12 hours on LOW .
It could be one of two reasons. Either you cooked it too long at too high a temperature so it dried out. Or you didn’t cook it quite long enough for it to pull apart easily. I find cooking in a bit of liquid helps make it more tender as well.
Just a suggestion, but I smoke my butts at 225 degrees until internal temp of 165, then mop and wrap in foil and bring to 195 degrees. Once internal is to temp, I remove and let rest in a cooler for an hour or two to let the connective tissue continue to break down . When you remove, the meat will just fall apart .