Pulled Pork and Barbecue Sauce

A few years ago on January 1st I resolved to eat more pulled pork. As tends to happen with most New Year's resolutions, I failed. I did start well -- I probably had pulled pork half a dozen times the first few months of 2012, but have since faltered. So with the new year 2014 > 2015 right around the corner, I thought I'd re-up a little. I had never made pulled pork before although it seemed pretty easy. And I did, in fact, find it quite simple. I even think my sauce turned out pretty well, which I made right in the crock pot mostly with the liquids from cooking the pork, plus a little starch to thicken it.

Start with about a 4 pound pork shoulder or pork loin -- with or without the bone. Rub it all over with a hot-and-sweet spice rub and brown the meat on all sides in some oil with onions and garlic. Then cook the pork (plus onions and garlic) in a crock pot in a tomato-and-vinegar based liquid. Shred the pork and there you have it. Use store bought sauce or the sauce from the crock pot and serve on sandwich rolls with cole slaw or other accoutrements. I'll list my precise ingredients and measurements below for posterity.

   Ingredients

• 1 T butter or oil

• 5 T brown sugar
• 1 T cayenne or paprika
• 1 T cumin

• 4 pound pork shoulder or loin
• 2 medium onions 
• 5 cloves of garlic

• 1/2 C apple cider vinegar
• 1/4 C taco sauce
• 1/4 C soy sauce
• 1/2 C ketchup
• 1 T worcestershire sauce
• 1/4 C honey

Heat oil or butter in a pan. Mix the next 3 ingredients to make the spice rub, and rub it all over the pork. Chop the onions and garlic and add to the pan. Add the pork to the pan and brown on all sides. This whole process should take about 10-15 minutes total. I did mine by sliding the onions over to one side of the pan and browning the meat in the other side.

Next add the onions and garlic to the crock pot and put the meat on top of them. Mix the liquid ingredients together and pour over the meat. It should cover or nearly cover the meat. If the top of the meat sticks out an inch or more, add more liquid.

Cook for about 6-8 hours (on low, or maybe just 4-6 on high) in the crock pot. Once it gets fall-right-off-the-bone tender, remove the meat to a large bowl or plate. Give the liquid a good stir and taste it. Decide if you want to use this liquid as your barbecue sauce. 

If you do, adjust taste by adding a bit more of one ingredient or another. Add more brown sugar or corn syrup if you want it to taste sweeter. Try adding artificial smoke flavor if you want that. Add more soy sauce if it doesn't taste salty/savory/umami enough. If you want to thicken it, mix a tablespoon of corn starch with a tablespoon or two of water (put it in a small container with a lid and shake it up). Turn the crock pot up so the liquid starts to boil, and gradually pour in the corn starch. Stir and let it simmer until it reaches desired consistency. I think I left my liquid in the crock pot for almost an hour after removing the pork since I added some more ketchup and the corn starch.

shredded pork after removal from crock pot -- before mixing with sauce

Shred the pork -- it should fall apart easily. If it doesn't fall apart then it needs to cool longer. Let the sauce finish, or use store bought sauce, and mix with pork. Serve on a sandwich roll with pickles or other desired extras.

Buffalo Chicken Dip

The Gagliardi's had a Super Bowl party to show off their new sofa, TV, refinished basement, and um, to serve a tray of hot dogs on top of the radiator (why doesn't that happen more often in life?). So I volunteered buffalo chicken dip! Very easy and very delicious.

Ingredients

• 2 (10 ounce) cans chunk chicken, drained
• 2 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, softened
• 1 cup ranch dressing
• 3/4 cup hot pepper sauce
• 1 1/2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
• 1 bunch celery, cleaned and cut into pieces for dipping
• 1 (8 ounce) box chicken flavored crackers

Directions

1. Heat chicken and hot sauce in a skillet over medium heat until heated through.
2. Stir in cream cheese and ranch dressing. Cook and stir until well blended and warm.
3. Mix in half of the shredded cheese and transfer the mixture to a slow cooker. Sprinkle the remaining cheese over top, cover, and cook on low until hot and bubbly.
4. Serve with celery and crackers.

Crock Pot Vegan Black Eyed Peas

My recipe turned out great!

A month or two ago, I came across various ideas for black eyed peas: the spicy southern kind. Most of the recipes include bacon and/or ham, which sounds good and makes sense, but also sounds like the kind of thing I'd rather avoid putting in a vegetable side dish -- ya know? So I queried the 'net for a vegan version and found this. Her recipe requires only:

• 6 cups dried organic black eye peas (soaked overnight) 
• 12 cups purified or distilled water 
• 2 organic onions (diced) 
• 2 - 3 tablespoons pink Himalayan salt 

And optionally:

• 2 - 3 dried bay leaves 
• diced jalapenos (to taste) 
• black pepper or cayenne pepper (to taste) 
• diced garlic (to taste)

jalapeno ... holla 'pain,' yo

It looked like exactly what I wanted, but it also looked ... really plain. Fine, I understand you want to leave out the ham hock, but jeez, you have to put something in there! Now, I've never made anything like this, and, honestly, I've hardly ever even eaten anything like this, so what the hell do I know, but ... black eyed peas, water, onions, and salt ... that's it?! Jalapenos optional?! Come on, you gotta have at least a little heat in there! So I went commando and decided to invent this one myself. I did want to keep it vegan so her recipe was a great starting point.

I didn't have enough black eyed peas
so I used a medley of other stuff as well!

I had about 2 cups of black eyed peas (and soaked them overnight). I didn't think that was quite enough so I added some lentils and wild rice. This I put in the crock pot with about 2 or 3 cups of vegetable broth, sea salt, hot paprika, and fresh ground black pepper. I let that cook for a bit on high while cutting the other stuff. I diced about 4 to 6 small tomatoes, about 4 to 6 jalapenos, and a small onion.  I added all that to the crock pot. I let it cook for a while, added some more broth, and eventually added some water. I dropped in a few large pinches of freshly grown stevia because it tasted too salty at one point.  Oh, and you know what, in a moment of inspiration, I felt like it needed some fat for flavor so I added a tablespoon or 2 of olive oil. It cooked for maybe 8 hours on high -- I wanted it to get almost mushy. People loved it, and I will definitely make this again. It could have used more onion and some garlic. So...

Ingredients

love this picture!

• 3 cups black eyed peas, soaked overnight (or 2 cups + lentils, etc)
• 2-3 cups vegetable broth
• 1-2 cups water
• 4-8 small tomatoes, diced
• 4-6 jalapeno peppers, diced
• 1 or 2 small onions
• 1 or 2 tablespoons of olive oil
• a few cloves of garlic
• hot paprika
• sea salt
• pepper
• fresh stevia??? (optional)

Directions

1. Soak black eyed peas overnight. 
2. Add peas and 2 cups of broth to crock pot. (Substitute some lentils for the black eyed peas for variety, if desired.) Cook on high while preparing other ingredients.
3. Add diced tomatoes and jalapenos; add oil, onions, garlic, and spices.
4. Continue cooking on high. If necessary, add more broth. Taste along the way, though, and add water instead of broth if flavor is too strong.
5. Cook for 6 hours or more, until desired consistency. It will take a while for the black eyed peas to get mushy.

served with burgers...

...sausages, and fruit salad

Crock Pot Roast

ingredients ready for the crock pot

I'm getting ready to load up the crock pot before heading out to celebrate St. Patrick's Day Pittsburgh Style. Well, hopefully I personally won't be celebrating in the full Pittsburgh vomit-inducing, public-urination style tradition. I've actually only been "out" for St. Patrick's Day once in Pittsburgh. It was moderately fun. 

But anyway the point is to load up the crock pot with a nice hearty meal for when we come back. We have some nice pieces of steak that I browned. I cut up a few potatoes and carrots and a couple stalks of celery. I made a low sodium chicken based broth and spiced the steaks very simply with onion salt and gourmet white pepper.

All loaded up!

It's all ready for assembly as desired, and then we'll have a delicious meal waiting when we get back later today!!  

Oh, FYI, it's a rather cool, gloomy morning, so I've been listening to James Taylor while prepping this meal, drinking coffee, and Pomeranian snugglin'.

Almost ready!

So, we ended up staying in all day since it was so gloomy out. We both felt like lounging rather than partying. We finally got the crock pot loaded up around 1. Of course we forgot to turn it on until about 2, but that's ok.

After it finished cooking in the crock pot, we strained out the veggies and made amazing gravy with the liquid. It was all delicious!

Yum!

Super Bowl Food

I made these tremendous nachos for the Super Bowl last night: Macho Nachos

And a version of these wings with maple syrup added to the slow cooker sauce to give it a sweet tang with the hot sauce: Slow Cooker Hot Wings