Four Pounds of Pork by Carl

It was great to see my roommate Carl (the shorter one in the middle of my profile picture) take a shine to our slow cooker because it made me a little less embarrassed. Don't get me wrong it's a great utility, but aren't we supposed to be eating ramen? When I started looking through recipes, pulled pork sandwiches was one that consistently made my mouth water. I really love anything between bread, and most meals can be improved by being put between two slices. I was thrilled when I came home and saw his massive slab of pig on our cutting board and his copy of Better Homes and Gardens Special Ultimate Slow Cooker opened to the pulled pork MASTER RECIPE! The result was a shelf of tupperware full of delicious meats just waiting to be stuffed into your favourite hoagie. Especially tasty on some crock pot bread!

THE INGREDIENTS

• 3.5lbs boneless pork shoulder (bought at a local butcher! Exciting!)
• 1 large chopped onion
• 6 gloves of minced garlic
• 350 ml or 12 oz of chili sauce (ours was pretty ketchup like)
• 2 tblsp brown sugar packed
• 2 tblsp of cider vinegar
  
• 1 tblsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tblsp chili powder
• Pinches of salt and pepper

VARIATIONS

The Better Homes and Gardens Special Ultimate Slow Cooker has a few recipes to use this meat for other than straight up submarine sandies. I am reading about an Asian soup that looks tasty as well as an apricot pulled pork sandwich that uses apricot jam and dried apricot. Some hot chilies would be great as well, I imagine pulled pork to be popular with patient cowboys.

DIRECTIONS



Simple for so much tasty meat.

• Trim fat off pork and fit into slow cooker, halving or quartering if necessary. Add onions and garlic as well.
• Mix chili sauce, brown sugar, cider vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, chilli powder, salt and pepper and pour over meat and onions.
• This is a recipe worth the long haul, so go for low on 10 to 11 hours rather than 5 to 6 on high.
• When cooked through, transfer pork to a large bowl. It should shred easily with two forks, add some of the cooking liquid to moisten.

Apparently this pork can be refrigerated for up to 3 days of can be frozen for up to 3 months. Makes a lot, there is a ton of this stuff in our house. Carl made a larger recipe, the one posted makes about 6 cups.

THE TASTIES

Big meaty sandwiches can do no wrong. Slap some cheese on that thing I could eat it as lunch for a month! Bravo to roommates who make great food and share interests. We seriously sit around the place talking about recipes we want to try. Take that parents, we can feed ourselves! I am concerned about the expiration date on ththough, how much longer can we store this stuff for? Best be brown bagging today!

So Are These Enchiladas?

Slow cooker Mexican food is something I hadn't tried yet, and I decided enchiladas would be the maiden dish. I've never had enchiladas having limited myself to fajitas, burritos and quesadillas in the past. I'm not entirely sure if these are what Mexico meant, but I was inspired by a recipe over at Fud or Something Like It that looked pretty tasty. Shredding chicken and mixing in sour cream and cheese? Sour cream and cheese are the essentials of any wrapped food in my opinion. I figured the recipe was lacking a bit in substance and spice, and I couldn't find enchilada sauce, so I ran with this recipe, adding a can of cooked beans and some peppers for filling.

INGREDIENTS

• 2 lbs or 1 kg or boneless skinless chicken breasts
• 1 package of chicken fajita seasoning
• 1 large onion chopped
• 1 cup of sour cream
• Lots of shredded cheddar
• Ketchup
• 1 cup of green chile salsa
• 1 package of flour tortillas (I used all 10 in of a small tortilla bag)
• 1 can of cooked red kidney beans strained and rinsed
• 1 green bell pepper sliced

VARIATIONS

Something more spicey and more genuinely Mexican has been earmarked for the next attempt, but there is no denying how good these are. The sauce itself was a variation, so it shows how much leniency there is. I would add some spice to these for sure.

DIRECTIONS

• In a sauce pan, mix the green chile salsa with the fajita mix. I wasn't sure how this was going to turn out, but it was very appropriate. I think enchilada sauce is mostly green chile based, so it worked out well. I stirred well, and added some ketchup to mild it out a bit.
• Place the chicken breasts on the bottom of your crock pot. Pour salsa fajita sauce on top. Cover with sliced onions.

• Cook on low for 6 hours.


• When cooked and well tender, transfer the chicken breasts to a large bowl and shred with forks.
• Mix one cup of sour cream with the chicken. Also add the chopped onions from the slow cooker and a couple hand fulls of shredded cheese.
• Grease some oven safe dishes and pre-heat oven to 350F.
• Scoop the chicken mixture into the flour tortillas and wrap with beans and green pepper.
• Place wrapped tortillas side by side in oven dish. Cover with the salsa fajita sauce from the crock pot and layer with more shredded cheese.
  
• Bake in the oven until beans and peppers are warm and cheese has melted. About 20 minutes. Seperate with a knife and you'll need a fork to eat!

THE TASTIES

Really great, especially as leftovers. These can feed quite a few people and I would consider bringing it to a pot luck some time since it can be carried around in a dish. As I mentioned before, I will keep an eye out for enchilada sauce for the real deal, or at least try to find a REAL recipe. More chili pepper, since we ran out, or hot sauce. So good, especially the sour cream and cheese chicken. Sloppy messes but worth the struggle and the additional use of an oven!

A College Kitchen Guide: Essential Utensils

Putting together so many meals has really helped developed my kitchen arsenal, but so has being the only child in the city left for my mother, my aunt and grandmother to spoil. Our kitchen might be a bit messy by their standards, but for three male college types we've done pretty well for ourselves. Since not everyone is fortunate enough to have three French Canadian mother's, I went about putting together lists of food and cooking staples that any enthusiastic John/Jane College should have to eat well. I got the inspiration from Kent P. Frandsen's Where's Mom Now That I Need Her? which I bought upon moving into my first apartment. It cost me $5 at one of those subway book stands. We don't necessarily own everything I post, but I probably used it recently off someone else. Thankfully we have a lot of cupboard space at our place, because as you can see they can get pretty full. Second hand goes great with college kitchens, most of our stuff was donated by our parents and their friends. They've gone miles to feed the hungry.



Kitchen Tools and Containers

• 9 by 13 baking pan
• Aluminum foil
• Plastic wrap
• Various sizes of tupperware
• Bread pan (meat loafs AND baking)
• Casserole dish
• Can opener/bottle opener OBVIOUSLY
• Colander/strainer
• Cookie sheet
• Casserole dish with cover
  
• Frying pan/sauce pan with lid
• Good grater
• Vegetable peeler
• Pots with lid, one big one
• Measuring cups
• Measuring spoons (actually we still don't have these. Promises have been made though)
• Mixing bowls
• Serving and mixing spoons
• Spatulas
• Whisk
• Garlic press (very handy indeed)
  
• Hand zester

EXTRAS (if we were all so lucky...)


These were a nice bonus from either as thrifts, gifts or raids. The most obvious being:

• Slow cooker crock pot! (Obviously, because you certainly don't read for the humour! Ha, ha.)
• Food processor, with different deadly blades
• Waffle iron (a recent addition, very valuable)
• Baking dishes
• Recipe books that are lots of fun to read!

No Mo Beans Please

Baked Beans was high on the list of simple crock pot recipes to try, but I think this went wrong when I tried mixing maple syrup with tomatoes. It was in truth an awkward attempt all together as I hadn't soaked beans in awhile and tried to combine a number of recipes. My girlfriend is a veggie head so I omitted the salt pork as good as that sounded. I also had to consider Grandmama Therese's French Canadian heritage so maple syrup was mandatory. The result was a very sweet, kind of dry, and slightly spicy mess. It was the night before Montreal's famous St. Patrick's Parade so I am guilty of getting a bit carried away with the warm ups. I will post the list of ingredients I wrote up myself to use only as an idea of how to mess up slow cooked beans.

INGREDIENTS

• 450g or 1/2 lb or 2 1/2f cups of dried white navy beans (these were not what I expected)
  
• 1 cup of tomato juice
• 1 large onion chopped
• 1/4 cup ketchup
• 1/2 cup molasses
• 1/2 cup of maple syrup (where other recipes used 1/4 cup of brown sugar, probably a good idea)
• 1/2 tsp dry mustard
• 1/2 tsp ground cloves
• 1/2 tsp ginger (I used dry, but I think fresh is the better option!)
• 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
  
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• A large pinch of cayenne (wrong?!)
  

VARIATIONS

A whole lot, considering these didn't work out. The beans didn't swell as much as I would have liked, but they were still soft. As I mentioned, I probably shouldn't have mixed so many tomato ingredients with maple syrup, and some of those spices look out of place. They may be mentioned in maple baked bean recipes though, and I'm sure I will gives these another try. Also this is a vegetarian recipe and I would like to try it with meat, especially since my roommate just found a cheap butcher up the street.

DIRECTIONS

Remember, this didn't work out well.

• Follow the directions on the back of your bean bag considering soaking. Most say something like soak beans in 6 cups of water over night, but I needed to heat the navy beans before they got soft. So soften up d'em beans! Make sure to strain and rinse before adding to the slow cooker.
  
• I then heated up the tomato juice with the clove and mustard and ginger and brought it to a boil.
• In a separate bowl I mixed the maple syrup, ketchup, molasses, and Worcestershire sauce.
• Finally I combined the strained beans and onions in the crock pot and added the tomato mix and the dark syrupy mix. I also added a pretty liberal pinch of cayenne and gave it a good stir.
• Cooked on the crock pot for 6 hours.

THE TASTIES

Worth trying again because I know a big bowl of beans can be very tasty. I would probably try without the maple syrup because I would like them better as a dinner. Already mentioned adding salt pork which I think could be really hearty. My navy beans never really swelled, and I'm not sure if that's because of how they are or who I am. I think I would prefer a thick, meatier bean like the kidney variation. People did eat these though and liked them, but let's keep in mind that they started drinking at 10 am!

Must be the Curry, Beef Curry

A basic curry, beef or otherwise, is good to know off the top of your head. Crock pot curries are really simple but are so tasty and filling on a bowl of steaming rice that I often have to hold myself back from announcing curry and a jug nights. I figured it was time to cover this casual crowd pleasure after Mark over at DA BEEF BUCKET asked me a very good question, where's da beef? Well Mark, it's in the slow cooker, and trust me it will be pretty tender. I figure this curry recipe could easily work with some chicken, but the I really like the minimalism of this and so prefer to use some cheap chopped stewing beef. I threw this together with the ingredients I had on hand and it came out really well.


INGREDIENTS

• Splash of oil
• 1lb or 450g of chunked stewing beef
• 2 medium onions
• 1 green bell pepper sliced
• 1 jalapeno pepper chopped fine
• 1 tsp ground ginger (notice the cute label my mom made for my spice kit?)
• 2 gloves of minced garlic
• 14 oz can of chopped stewed tomatoes. That is half the quantity we normally use.
• 1 cup of beef broth (we diluted ours)
• 1 tbsp of curry powder (if not a bit more)
• Salt and pepper

VARIATIONS

Too many possibilities, vegetables to meat to what you serve it on. I kept this one simple, but I do love throwing cauliflower or spinach in curry. Some people also find many curries too tomatoey, and truthfully I do make many curries with a can of stewed tomatoes. My next one I might find a recipe that is just coconut milk or something, like a butter chicken meal. Also, naan bread mmmm.

DIRECTIONS

• Heat oil in a frying pan and brown beef. (Is browning before slow cooking always neccesary? More reserach needed.) Transfer to slow cooker, leaving fat.
• Fry jalapeno and garlic in beef fat until tender and add ginger.
• Add stewed tomatoes and juice and curry powder. Stir thoroughly and bring to a boil. Add salt and pepper as necessary
• Quarter your onions and slice your green pepper. Mix them in with the beef.
• Top veggies and meat with pan sauce and add beef broth. Stir well.
• Cook on low for 6-8 hours. We did hours on high for 4 hours and a few pieces could have gone a bit longer, but some were still very tender.

THE TASTIES

For an improvised curry I was really impressed how well this turned out. It filled our apartment with a rich smell and my roomies were anxious for the spicey! I think we added a bit of extra curry to the mix since it was the last of it. Pretty liquidy but perfect to serve over some rice. I have since read a few recipes that brown the meat in flour and I am going to find out what the PROS of that method are. Probably something about searing...Man I love curries!