grew up in Colorado and nothing feels like the impending transition from summer to autumn more than the height peach season. My wife and I typically buy peaches by the box to freeze, can, jam, and put on almost every meal we eat.
Peaches are great on top waffles, dutch babies, and biscuits, but one of my favorite ways to integrate them into a more complete dish is to add them to pulled pork. I love smoking pork butts and pull them when they’re done, but I actually think pulled pork tends to turn out better in a dutch oven. Rather than the fat dripping through the grates of the smoker, it stays in the pot and everything has a chance to stew, which provides the opportunity to impart strong flavors other than smoke into the meat.
One of my favorite savory flavor combos with peaches is thyme and I recently added the dou to a pulled pork I made for a dinner party. It turned out really well. The peach pieces stayed intact and were a nice visual element to the dish. Both the peach and thyme added a lot of flavor to the meat and are probably one of my favorite flavor combinations I’ve found yet to pair with pulled pork.
Recipe
Ingredients
- 5 lbs pork butt
- 1 bundle of thyme
- 3 ripe peaches
- 1 tablespoon honey
- 4 tbs red wine vinegar
- Salt
- Pepper
- Cinnamon
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 250F
- Cut the pork butt into large chunks. Cut the peaches into bite-sized chunks.
- Add everything to the dutch oven and stir.
- Cook for 4-6 hours, stirring occasionally. If it starts to look dry, add a tablespoon or two of water. But the peaches should give off plenty of water.
- Right before serving, pull the pork and mix it well with the remaining liquid and fat.
- Pull out any large chunks of fat that wouldn’t be enjoyable to get a bite of.
