Thursday, September 16, 2010

mmmm pork!

Pork shoulder roast is amazing because it is so inexpensive but yields delicious porky goodness.  This is definitely a winner anytime since it is really hard to mess this up.

To begin I rubbed the pork in a combination of brown sugar, garlic and crushed pistachios.  I let the pork sit with the rub for a couple of hours before placing in the slow cooker.  I added sliced red onions, anaheim chiles, and beer to the slow cooker and set to cook on low for 7 hours.




I moved the roast and some of the chiles from the slow cooker to a very hot oven.  I blasted the pork roast to crisp up the outside to achieve a texture somewhat similar to carnitas.  I reduced the leftover cooking liquid, added apple cider vinegar, garlic, paprika, red pepper flakes, and mustard to create a quick barbecue sauce.



The pork was delicious and luscious, the sauce added a bit of spice and sweetness to really bring out the flavor.

7 comments:

  1. This looks really fantastic. Would you mind sharing how you used the oven to achieve the crispiness?

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  2. Hi Steve, sure thing.

    I preheated the oven to 450, in the meantime I cut small slits on the portions of exposed skin and fat. I then threw the pork in the oven and cooked for about 30min, making sure not to burn anything.

    Great blog by the way, what are your thoughts on Three Floyd's?

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  3. Great, thanks for the tip. I think I'm going to have to give this a try over the weekend.

    I haven't ever had a chance to try Three Floyd's. I poked around their website a bit and it doesn't look like they distribute to California, although I'll keep my eyes peeled at the beer store. Is it pretty good stuff?

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  4. the BBQ sauce looks AMAZING (i think mustard is critical to a good one!). and what kind of slow cooker are you using? i wonder if i could simulate this in my rice cooker (which actually cooks lots of things besides rice - i make kalbi jjim in there sometimes and it's a similar slow-cooking process for tenderizing tough/stringy beef).

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  5. Daniel, this looks redic. We're definitely going to try this at home. Silly question, how did you reduce the left over liquid. Just pour it into a sauce pan and slowly heat? Did you use a solvent (like brandy or vinegar) to get some of the leftovers off the pan?

    I was always terrible at doing au poivre.

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  6. megan, hmmm not too sure, but I do use the rice cooker for other things as well! I would imagine if you can slow cook beef, you can do pork. It would make for an interesting experiment!

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  7. Hey Justin,

    Actually I did this in the slow cooker so I just dumped all the cooking liquid into a saucepan afterwards, but I did add vinegar and mustard. Since it is braising there aren't any tasty bits that stick to the pan.

    If I were to do this in the dutch oven, I would sear the meat first, then remove it, add onions/shallots/garlic then use your cooking liquid (for pork I use beer)to pick off any of the bits in the pan. After this add the meat back and slow cook in the oven :-)

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