Monday, July 2, 2012

Pulled Pork-Easy Crock Pot Meal

We had some friends over this past month for our monthly "Preggers" dinner. I have a couple friends due around the same time, so the couples meet up to eat. What a great plan huh? The wives are even planning on sending our spouses to volunteer at a consignment sale, so we have first crack at the items for sale.
I wanted to use my crock pot and make either pulled chicken or pulled pork sandwiches. Mike chose to go with pulled pork.
Here's the finished pulled pork sandwiches.
I made a slaw composed of cabbage, red cabbage, carrots, and some onions. I was not quite sure of what I was doing. All I knew was that I wanted a colorful, crunchy, non-mayo based slaw.  I ended up making one up using apple cider vinegar, rice wine vinegar, salt, ,sugar, and a splash of soy sauce. 
Here's the raw pork, onions, and garlic that we started with.  We used tenderloin because it was cheaper than the pork butt at Sam's Club, and I thought that it would be healthier to use a better, less fatty cut of meat.  Mike was opposed to the idea because "more fat=more better," but as you can see, we ended up cooking purchasing the tenderloin. 
Here's the flavorings/aromatics that I added: Worcestershire sauce, cayenne pepper, yellow mustard, thyme, and vinegar.

  Here's a picture of the slightly cooked pork. 
Here's the pork after 8 hours of cooking. 

Shredding the pork.
We ended up with two types of pulled pork. I ended up dousing some shredded pork in Kent Rathburn's Texas Peach Barbeque sauce. Yum, but slightly acidic.  Mike chose to reduce the pork juices and ingredients into a sauce and added a bit more sugar. I think that the general consensus was that Mike's sweet pulled pork tasted better than mine (I'm guessing it's partially because his finished product had more fat in it too).

2 comments:

K and S said...

another reason why I need a crock pot :) looks good!

genkitummy said...

Crock pots are such a time saver! Plus you can make a large portion of food in without very much work!