Nicholas Gavin is the Culinary Creative Director of ChefSteps, where he develops recipes and is responsible for making all the food look beautiful. Nick has worked at ChefSteps for over a decade; he and ChefSteps co-founder Grant Crilly worked together at Modernist Cuisine. Nick has worked in professional kitchens both in the United States and abroad, most notably at Mugaritz in San Sebastian, Spain.

Nicholas Gavin

The Carolinas are famous for pork barbecue. Old-school barbecue shops smoke whole hogs or shoulders low and slow, and then chop—rather than pull—the meat into a tantalizing mix of crunchy skin, fatty morsels, and lean bites. Pitmasters toss the chopped pork with a sharp, tangy sauce that cuts through the richness, before serving it up.There are several regional sauces from this part of the country, and they generally adhere to a blueprint of high acidity balanced with a little sweetness and background heat. We’ve got recipes for three of our favorites: mustard-based <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/recipes/carolina-gold-bbq-sauce">Carolina Gold</a> from South Carolina, a vinegar-forward sauce from <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/recipes/eastern-north-carolina-style-vinegar-barbecue-sauce">eastern North Carolina</a>, and a slightly sweeter ketchup-spiked variation on that theme from <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/recipes/lexington-style-barbecue-sauce">Lexington</a>.We’ve already developed great recipes for <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/recipes/bbq-pork-shoulder">real-deal smoked shoulder</a> as well as an <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/recipes/smokerless-smoked-pork-shoulder">indoor sous vide version</a>, so we wanted to round out our repertoire with an indoor oven recipe for folks who don’t have a backyard or a Joule circulator. The goal: perfectly tender and juicy meat on the interior with crunchy bark on the surface.To accomplish that, we start by seasoning a boneless pork butt with our new <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/recipes/carolina-gold-barbecue-rub">Carolina Gold–inspired rub</a>, and innovative <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/recipes/bark-builder">Bark Builder</a>. Next, we nestle the pork onto a rack in a cake pan with a splash of water, seal with foil, and pop it in a relatively hot oven (by barbecue cooking standards). Starting the cooking process at a higher heat creates a humid, steamy environment that helps kick off the long process of gently transforming the pork shoulder’s tough collagen into melty gelatin. After 30 minutes we lower the oven temp, and continue to cook the pork until it’s pull-apart tender. That’s the first part of the two-stage cooking process.For stage two, we remove the foil and finish the pork uncovered to dry out the surface and crisp up the bark. All that’s left to do from there is let the pork rest, chop it up, and dress it with the sauce of your choice. Indoor barbecue just got a whole lot better.

Oven Barbecue Pork Shoulder