Pulled Pork in the Oven

The cut is the whole decision. Pork neck (sometimes called pork shoulder or Boston butt, depending which counter you're at) is chosen because it's seamed through with fat and connective tissue — exactly the stuff that's a liability in a quick-cooked chop but an asset here, since it's what melts into succulence over the long hours. Don't trim it hard. The recipe says remove only the visible sinew and surface fat, and that's deliberate: strip the fat out and you've removed the self-basting system the whole method relies on. If your butcher only has a leaner leg joint, this isn't the dish for it — you'd need to baste constantly and you'd still end up drier.

The rub is doing two separate jobs and it helps to know which spice is doing what. Salt and the two sugars (white and brown) are the seasoning-and-moisture engine described above — the sugars also help the surface caramelise and darken over the long cook, giving you that deep mahogany "bark" people associate with proper barbecue, without needing actual fire. The paprika, smoked paprika, cumin, mustard powder, garlic and onion powder, chilli flakes and cayenne are flavour and colour, not function — smoked paprika in particular is standing in for the smoke flavour you'd get from an actual smoker or barbecue pit, since a British kitchen oven obviously doesn't produce any. If you don't have smoked paprika, you lose that specific woodsmoke note, but regular paprika plus a very small pinch of something like chipotle powder gets you closer than nothing.

Setting aside 2 tablespoons of the rub to sprinkle at the end isn't decoration, it's about contrast: eleven hours in a sealed dish mellows and blends spices into the meat, so the raw-ish hit of fresh rub on top at serving brings back some of the brightness that slow cooking quietly smooths away.

The clay dish soaking is about physics, not reverence. Unglazed clay (a Römertopf is the common UK brand name, but any unglazed clay roaster works the same way) is porous. Soak it and the clay itself holds water, which then releases slowly as steam inside the sealed pot during cooking — effectively building humidity around the meat for free, which helps keep it from drying over such a long stretch. If you don't own one, a heavy casserole with a tight lid, or a proper oven roasting bag inside a tray, does the equivalent job: the point is sealing moisture in, not the specific vessel. A loosely covered tray with foil "roughly over it" will let steam escape and work against you — this is one place where a plate-as-a-lid substitute genuinely won't cut it, because the whole mechanism depends on the seal.

Starting the covered dish in a cold oven, rather than a preheated one, matters more than it looks: it means the meat and the dish warm up together, gently, rather than the outside of the joint getting hit with full heat before the inside has started moving at all. It's a small insurance policy against the surface overcooking relative to the centre over such a long haul.

The finish — pulling it apart with two forks while it's still hot and steaming — isn't just presentation. Collagen that's turned to gelatin stays soft while hot and starts to firm up again as it cools, the same reason gravy thickens in the fridge. Pull it while it's hot and it falls into strands easily; let it sit and cool first and you're fighting the meat to get the same result. If you've got time pressure at the other end instead — serving a crowd, say — it holds and reheats far better pulled and in its juices than it does as a cooled, un-pulled joint you try to shred later.