Pulled Pork Recipe Redux

I have used a great pulled pork recipe many times with great praise from family and friends. I was in the grocery store perusing the magazines by the checkout stand and one called "Quick and Simple" caught my eye, probably because of the starburst promo calling out "17 Budget-Friendly Recipes." They had a pulled pork recipe in there from a guy who has a tv show called The Poor Chef that sounded good and it was quite similar to my recipe I got from who knows where originally. I point that out because people, particularly new cooks, are often hesitant to alter a recipe. I think if you compare the ingredient list for these two you'll see that the actual ingredients are about identical. The main difference is some minor variations in the proportions (more brown sugar, less vinegar, more black pepper, etc. ) So if you're a bit shy of one ingredient in a recipe like this, experiment!

I had bought a pork roast a while back and made a Cuban Pork Roast with half of it. I threw the other half in the freezer. I used that for my pulled pork the other night.

1 onion, finely chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 Tbs chili powder
1 tsp black pepper
1 12-oz bottle chili sauce (look near the ketchup!)
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup apple cider vinegar
1 Tbs Worcestershire sauce
2-3 pound boneless pork roast

Put all the ingredients in a slow cooker and stir around a bit to coat the pork.

If you have an older slow cooker, cook about 8-10 hours. (You can get the whole thing ready the night before and refrigerate, but really it's pretty quick to throw together.) If you have a newer slow cooker, consider adjusting the time a bit. I find my newer one cooks so hot that meals are usually done in half the time called for in older recipes. In this case, I cooked the meat from 12-4, then shredded it, let it cook another half hour or so in the sauce, then refrigerated until we were ready to eat. I heated it up on the stove while I mixed up some coleslaw to go with it.

Definitely a winning recipe.

Burned on Food

Every cook has probably had to deal with burning food in a pan at some point. My daughter did it the other day with some tomato soup, made with milk of course. Ugh. We soaked it overnight to no avail. So I went online and found this page on eHow.com about cleaning burned pans. Wow! The baking soda and vinegar step did the trick and the pan, a nearly 25 year old Revereware pot, looks as good as new again.

Bean Salad with Corn and Lime Dressing

This was mostly from Mom's Updated Recipe Box: 300 Family Favorites Made Quick and Healthy, one of my all-time favorites. I was missing a few things and it STILL came out great, but I remember from earlier renditions that the missing ingredients (more red pepper, cilantro), added much so am including them here. Just know that if you're shy something, mix it up anyway, taste it and adjust the seasonings as needed. The key to me is the garlic and lime juice.

First mix up the dressing:

• 2 Tbs olive oil
• 1/2 cup lime juice
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• 1 tsp (or more if you like!) cumin
• 2-3 clove garlic, minced

In a bowl combine:

• 3 15-ounce cans of beans of assorted varieties: black, navy, kidney, etc.), drained and rinsed
  
• 1-2 cups corn, canned or frozen
• 1/2 cup chopped red onion
• 1/2 to 1 each red and green peppers, diced
• 1/4 cup chopped cilantro
• 2 Tbs chopped fresh parsley (grow this! It's easy!)
• 1 green onion, chopped
• salt and pepper to taste

Mix up the beans, corn, etc. Shake the dressing ingredients together in a jar, then pour over the beans and corn and toss. Refrigerate at least an hour to let the flavors blend, toss and serve.

Book Review for UK Readers: Budget Meals

Periodically, cookbook publishers send me books to review, which is great fun. I get a chance to see books I wouldn't normally have picked up. I've gotten some great recipes from some. Others aren't quite my style but I can see how they would be good for other types of cooks. Budget Meals falls into that category.

The recipes are all in metric to begin with, which makes trying to follow them just a bit more effort for folks in the US, although there are sites that will help you with converting measurements and cooking temperatures. And of course you could always get a kitchen scale to help out with those things measured by weight rather than volume as we're used to doing here.

Second, the recipes are oftentimes a bit too simplistic for my tastes. However, if you're just getting started in the kitchen or just want to put simple meals on the table every night without too much ado, I think this book would be a great place to start.

There are 8 weeks of menu plans and recipes and shopping lists, with a few recipes giving you the option of fixing the main course in the oven or slow cooker as suits your needs. I do like to sit down and make up my own week's menu, list of recipes, and shopping list but I cook too much to follow anyone else's list. But when you're getting started it can be very helpful to follow someone else's plan a few times to get a feel for how to put together a whole meal, how to time the preparation so everything's done at the same time, and so forth. Later, you can go back and pick your favorite recipes to create your own plan. And if you're just having a brain-dead week, go ahead and follow someone else's plan for that week and relax. I always say that coming up with the menu plan for the week is much harder than actually cooking dinner every night!

Drawbacks: There are a few recipes in here that gave me pause, including one that included directions of "follow the directions on the packet" for roasting a whole chicken. There are desserts for nearly every meal and there's no way I'd serve dessert at every meal. I think it might have been better to remove these from the weekly plan and just offer a few easy desserts in the back section, with variations for variety.

So a mixed review. I wouldn't buy the book for myself but I might buy it for someone else who needed a jumpstart in the kitchen.