Reheating pulled pork

chumdog

I am cooking two butts for a party this weekend and my time will be scarce the day before. I plan to cook it a couple days ahead of time and just reheat. I have always pulled after a rest and ate immediately. What has worked for you guys in the past? I have a vacuum sealer, crock pot, etc. Thanks.

KenfromMI

Vacuum seal and re heat slowly in hot water.

Big_Green_Craig

Pull it while it is hot. When you are ready to reheat, put it in a pan with a splash of water and cover with foil. Heat it in a 400F oven until warmed to your preference. The water will steam the pork and bring it back to life. It will be like it just came off the smoker. 

KenfromMI

Definitely pull while it's hot I agree. I've also re heated in a disposable aluminum pan covered in HD foil spritzed with apple juice and also a mild finishing sauce at times with good luck too.  

Terrebandit

Whatever you do, don't use a microwave. I agree with the hot water recommendation.

SenecaTheYounger

Easiest is as BigGreenCraig said, just keep it in a shallow pan (will heat more quickly) covered in foil.  I have added a splash (not a can) of coke, or some bbq sauce, or even a small amount of water.

Reheating a butt is not as good as having it from the smoker right away, but it can be very good reheated.

Small batches (single serving, for a sandwich or two) can be zapped in the microwave with no problems.

JRWhitee

I did this 2 weeks ago, I cooked the butt the day prior, pulled it and put in in ziploc bags and refrigerated them. The next day I put the bags in simmering water until hot, the pork was just like coming off the egg. I think a vacuum sealer would work better, I need one.

Big_Green_Craig

Big_Green_Craig said:

Pull it while it is hot. When you are ready to reheat, put it in a pan with a splash of water and cover with foil. Heat it in a 400F oven until warmed to your preference. The water will steam the pork and bring it back to life. It will be like it just came off the smoker. 

I usually give it a light sprinkle of the rub I used before I steam it. 

cortguitarman

I put it in a pan on the stove with some apple juice and reheat that way. We usually make extras to freeze for quick weeknight meals.

Mickey

Pulled out 8oz vac pack from freezer yesterday. Put PAC in pot and it was like I just pulled it. I do not open the package till I put it in my plate.

SenecaTheYounger

Single-serving vacuum sealed freezer bags are ideal, but for doing anything more than a few servings it becomes a project.

SenorHuevo

Seneca is not wrong -- for a little bit of pork, the microwave works well.  Put it in a bowl, a little squirt of the mop (apple cider vin, sugar + red pepper flakes), cover with parchment, heat on half power.  It steams it well.

But, I think for a big amount, reheating via sous vide makes sense (this is what Chipotle does for a number of its meats). 

I think however you do it, the key is to be gentle with the heat. 

SenecaTheYounger

Chipotle isn't so much doing sous vide, as they are simply reheating foods already precooked at an (offsite) central kitchen. 

I just find the idea of single servings floating in a bag to be a pain.  A large gallon bag being reheated in water may work, since water conducts heat far better than air, but I would simply offer that a large amount of meat (two lasagna-sized pans, in my experience) do very well being reheated covered with foil.  The smell fills the kitchen too, which really gets people excited.

My exposure to plastics in an industry setting, and their similarity to fats (they bind with fats readily, given their often similar structures), made me question the wisdom of heating plastic and food in simmering water.  I have learned that even though, as with microwaving, plastic can sometimes melt, even then, there's no significant evidence of pthalates or PBA contaminating the food.

For me it is an issue of what's easier.

It's also generally that I don't store large amounts of PP to be reheated en masse at a later date, instead I do single servigns of leftovers, at most.  IfI am ever suddenly required to cook PP in advance, and know it will be reheated for a crowd, it's typically a next-day kind of thing.  And so no need to vacuum bag the whole thing for just 24 hours.

It all works. Do what's easiest for you.

SenorHuevo

Heating food in a vacuum sealed bag in a temperature controlled bath sounds a lot like sous vide to me...

KenfromMI

Like I said I also re heat in a aluminum pan with apple juice and HD foil over the top. I also then add this sauce to it when it is just about ready to serve and let it warm for a few more and it always get rave reviews.

KenfromMI

Not sure why this is screwing up but hope this posts.

http://tvwbb.com/showthread.php?25113-Kinda-Carolina-Rib-Sauce

SenecaTheYounger

I'm sure it does.

But it isn't, not unless you hang your entire premise on the fact that all sous vide requires is a bag, and warm water.

The sous vide movement is is about cooking under a vacuum, at extended periods of time, with an eye to not merely heating it up, but COOKING it, and cooking it in a way that is vastly different than conventional methods.  Premise being that certain transformations are taking place during sous vide that we don't get by merely microwaving, or searing (or whatever your alternate method is). 

Chipotle would LOVE for you to think they are doing something as sophisticated as sous vide.  "Really folks, we're gastronomes now!"

But sadly, what they are doing is building a storefront, putting tables in it, and making it look like a restaurant.  Then, a few hundred miles away, in a factory kitchen, they cook the food entirely, in a controlled environment.  They then vacuum seal it, freeze it, and ship it across country on semi-trucks, palletized, to their "restaurants".

Sometime around 2 in the afternoon, a teenage boy on early dismissal from his high school dons a hair net, and opens a cardboard box, and plops the pre-cooked pre-portioned food into a tub of hot water where it thaws and sets (held at safe temperatures) for some time in anticipation of being purchased later that evening.  When an order is placed, tt will be plucked from the bath, snipped open, and finished if need be (made into a sandwhich, say, or sauced and fired to gum up the stickiness of the sauce, as with ribs).

But it isn't the same as someone placing raw ingredients into a similar vacuum-sealed bag, with a eye to holding it at 132 degrees for 48 hours, while doing a medicine man dance around the sousvide machine, invoking the gastro gods to transform it into something sublime.

From a cursory, surface view, it may look like sous vide.  But let's not kid ourselves, whether you believe the sous vide hype on the gastro side of things, what the commercial chain restaurants are doing is simply reheating precooked food, and controlling costs so that they can chase the lowest common denominator.

No harm no foul either way.  But one of these is a serious attempt at cooking better food. The other is merely thawing, holding, and reheating precooked food.

Eggcelsior

If I recall correctly, Chipotle cooks everything sous vide at some factory in Chicago and then ships it out to be reheated onsite.

The only one that cooks everything onsite is in NYC. IT's their test kitchen. Some locations cook a specific item(like carnitas) on-site but everything else is shipped in.

The location in NYC is headed by a JBF chef as well. 

I remember this in a Serious Eats article from some years ago, so things may have changed.

nolaegghead

Fun facts about sous vide:

Although "sous vide" is French for "under vacuum", the food is only under a vacuum during the bag sealing process.  The purpose of the vacuum is to remove enough gas from the bag to achieve better thermal conductivity in a water bath.  Once that bag is sealed, the pressure inside the bag equalizes to the ambient pressure. 

Ironically, that very vacuum can negatively change the food texture.   Most consumer "food saver" sealers can't draw enough vacuum to do noticeable harm, but the chamber sealers can if the time is long enough or the vacuum high enough.

SenecaTheYounger

Thanks Excelsior.  If Chipotle is specifically cooking sous vide (even in an offsite commercial kitchen), then that's different than what I was lambasting.

There are many chains which cook off-site, freeze, and reheat their food in baths. But if Chipotle isn't one of them, all the better.

Apologies to Chipotle-files for my lumping them in with lesser chain restaurants.  And thanks for clarifying about them specifically.

My point, made in the most laborious way possible, was about baggies and hot water: that merely heating up food in a plastic bag doesn't make it sous vide. 

nolaegghead

Eggcelsior said:

If I recall correctly, Chipotle cooks everything sous vide at some factory in Chicago and then ships it out to be reheated onsite.

The only one that cooks everything onsite is in NYC. IT's their test kitchen. Some locations cook a specific item(like carnitas) on-site but everything else is shipped in.

The location in NYC is headed by a JBF chef as well. 

I remember this in a Serious Eats article from some years ago, so things may have changed.

You're correct, beaker.

http://newyork.seriouseats.com/2011/03/chipotle-new-york-secret-menu-chelsea-location-nate-appleman.html