Whenever I go to the grocery store I peruse the meat section to see what good meat happens to be on sale. I’m sure I inherit this trait from my mom. When we were growing up we had an extra large chest freezer in our basement. (My mom still has this same freezer.) It has to be a commercial-sized freezer. It’s so large you could fit several people lying down inside. I’m guessing four. Maybe six! It’s huge. At any rate, if you sifted through our freezer you would see cuts of meats of all shapes and sizes wrapped in freezer paper.
My freezer isn’t much different except that it’s my refrigerator freezer and doesn’t hold as much as my mom’s chest freezer. But I probably have about 6 or 8 pounds grass fed beef, 3 to 6 pounds of ground turkey, some ribs, a whole chicken, some brats, hot dogs and lord knows what else in there. (Not to mention several pints of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream.)
At any rate I pulled our a four pound pork shoulder roast the other day intending to make some pork primarily for the dogs. My dogs are gourmet. They don’t like dog food. They like people food. I found a super simple recipe for Kalua Pork to follow at Creme de la Crumb. I’d heard of the dish before but had no idea what the recipe entailed. When I saw how simple it was, I decided to go for it.
So I will tell you that my dogs threw up after they tried the pork. They loved it and gobbled it up but threw up. This is no reflection of the recipe! I think they must have some sort of aversion to liquid smoke. It’s the only thing I can think of because they actually didn’t even eat that much and then promptly threw up, and I’ve never cooked with liquid smoke before.
I was secretly pleased that my dogs couldn’t eat the pork because they seem to get more meat then I do when I do the cooking and quite frankly I’m tired of not getting my fair share. Well now I have four pounds of pork all to myself, and I couldn’t be happier. It reminds me of a little Hawaiian BBQ restaurant I ate at a few times when I lived in Portland, Ore. and worked in Beaverton.
ingredients.
- 1 pork shoulder roast (approximately 4 lbs)
- 1 T. liquid smoke
- 1 T. Himalayan pink salt (I used sea salt because that’s all I had)
directions.
- Spray the inside of your slow cooker with nonstick spray.
- Pierce the roast all over with a fork. Place in slow cooker. Pour liquid smoke evenly over the roast, then sprinkle with the salt. Cover the roast and refrigerate overnight.
- In the morning, remove the roast from the fridge and cook on low for 8 to 12 hours. I cooked mine on low for eight hours and then left it in there on warm for another two hours.
- Remove pork from crockpot and place on a serving platter. Let cool for about 20 to 30 minutes and then pull pork apart with 2 forks. It’s delicious as is but you can also serve it over rice, in tacos, on a bun or biscuit with some barbecue sauce, etc. Really the sky’s the limit.
I served my pork on top a cornbread biscuit and topped with tangy barbecue sauce. So good!
Recipe rating:
Food Snob 