Food - Drink
How Root
Beer Can
Elevate Your
Pulled Pork
By HALDAN KIRSCH
The key to good pulled pork is giving it time to break down the connective tissues, like collagen, holding the meat together. This usually means cooking the meat in low heat for an extended period, but another way to help break the tissue down is using an acidic marinade — one great option is root beer.
Any soda may be an unconventional choice to flavor savory meat, but root beer can give a ton of flavor to your pulled pork while tenderizing the meat. Root beer and other sodas have an abundance of phosphoric and citric acids that make them surprisingly well suited to help soften the meat.
Root beer also has a great flavor that will add an exciting sweetness to accompany smoky or tangy barbecue sauce, and we recommend adding a can of root beer to a slow cooker along with the pulled pork. The soda can also make a great marinade base, but be sure to keep your marinading or cooking time under eight hours, or your meat might start to turn mushy.