Slow Cooker BBQ

I love the flavor of a good smoked BBQ but don't have the supplies or the time to spend properly smoking meat. I came up with this recipe after much experimentation. It doesn't exactly replicate the flavor of a well-done smoked BBQ as it lacks the acrid bite of true smoke, but it's close enough that I've fooled people at dinner parties in the past. This has rapidly become the most requested item at any potluck I go too.

Ingredients:
1 Boston Butt Pork Roast (7-8 lbs)
2 bottles of liquid smoke
1 12 oz. bottle of hot sauce (I use Frank's Red Hot Original but any sauce will work)
1 tbsp. Sriracha Chili Sauce
1 small can of tomato paste
2 tbsp. worcestershire sauce
1 tbsp. dark brown sugar
1 tbsp. salt
1 tbsp coarse ground black pepper

Directions:
Combine 1/2 bottle of liquid smoke and 1 tbsp. of worcestershire sauce in a bowl.
Place into a meat injection syringe and inject the mixture into various places on the roast.
Coat the outside of the roast with salt and pepper.
Wrap the roast tightly in aluminum foil and place into a crock pot.
Cook on low temperature for 10 hours.
Remove the roast from the crock pot and drain any juice in the bottom of the crock into a bowl. Reserve this juice for later.
Unwrap the roast and allow to cool for 1 hour.

Shred the roast with fingers or a fork, removing the bone. This can be thrown away or saved for soup stock.
In a large bowl, combine the remainder of the liquid smoke, hot sauce, can of tomato paste, 1 tbsp. worcestershire sauce, and the dark brown sugar.
Stir together and gradually add reserved juices from the roast until the mixture takes on the thickness of a light gravy.
Taste the mixture. If it is too spicy or too vinegary for your taste, add another tbsp of brown sugar.
Combine the shredded meat and the sauce mixture, stirring well to coat all meat with the sauce.
Place the mixture back into the crock pot and cook on low for another 10 hours. Stir the mixture every couple of hours. If it gets to thin, pull out some of the excess liquid. If it starts to dry out, add a couple of tbsp. of the reserved liquid and stir.
Serve on hamburger buns.

Banana Fried Rice

This weekend, some friends and I did an Asian themed potluck dinner. Since I'm always the one in our group who has to be difficult, I decided to do it just a little differently. I made an Asian staple, fried rice, but gave it an island twist by adding bananas.

The secret to this recipe is in the Chinese Five Spice Powder. This can usually be found in the ethnic foods section of your local supermarket. If not, most major cities have an Asian grocery and it's easily accessible there.

This recipe is up on my Associated Content page so click over there to give it a look if you're so inclined.

Recipe is here.

The Remains of the (St. Patrick's) Day

One of the unintended consequences of my group of friends' potluck dinners like the one described in the previous post is that we usually have a lot of leftovers. Most of the leftovers go home with people or to work with Ash and me for lunch. Sometimes, however, my leftovers aren't dishes but ingredients. At those times, for the sake of my poor stuffed refrigerator, I have to channel my inner Iron Chef and use what's before me to make something good.

This week, I had the following items to work with:

Boston Butt pork that I didn't cube up for the Irish Stew
Some whole mushrooms
Some of the blue cheese stuffing mixture from the Stuffed Mushrooms recipe (you can find that recipe over at Jal's Kitchen, link to the right).

With those ingredients, I decided that a roast was the way to go. Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:
2 lb. of Boston Butt Pork
16 oz. whole raw mushrooms, washed and patted dry
2 tbsp. of Blue Cheese Stuffing
1/2 C. light rum
Kosher Salt
Freshly Ground Pepper
1 tbsp. lemon juice

Start out by pre-heating your oven to 400 degrees.
Place a cast iron skillet on medium-high heat on your stove top.
While the skillet is heating up, liberally sprinkle kosher salt and freshly ground pepper onto both sides of the meat.
When the skillet is very hot, add the meat fat-side down and cook for 2 minutes to give it a good sear. Flip the meat over and sear the other side as well.
Once you've finished your sear, spread the blue cheese mixture on top of the pork.
Add the mushrooms to the skillet and sprinkle the lemon juice over the whole thing.
Place into the oven and bake for 30-40 minutes. Take the skillet out of the oven and place back onto medium-high heat on the stove top.
Take the roast out of the skillet and place on a cutting board. Allow to rest for 5 minutes before cutting.
Leaving the mushrooms in the skillet, pour in the rum and use a wooden spoon to deglaze the skillet.
Continue to cook, stirring often, until the liquid thickens enough to coat the mushrooms.

That's it. A great leftover dinner that no one would know was leftovers unless they were told.

St. Patty's Day Potluck

If you couldn't tell from the picture in my profile, I am of Irish heritage and really enjoy exploring the culinary styles of my ancestral home. Over the weekend, my friends and I did an Irish potluck to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. My friend Jalera contributed White Chocolate Hazelnut Cakes (not terribly Irish, but good) and Blue Cheese Stuffed Mushrooms. If you'd like the recipe for those, the link to her blog is on the right. She promises she'll have them up this week.

My contribution to the dinner was Irish Stew. It turned out really well. I wish I had pictures for you but Jal has my camera and hasn't given it back yet.

Irish Stew
Guinness Stout has long been one of my favorite cooking ingredients. It provides a depth and richness to broths and sauces, does a pretty good job of pulling the gamy taste out of venison, and you can drink the leftover ingredients. Try that with corn starch! This stew varies quite a bit from tradition by necessity. Traditional Irish Stew is cooked on the stove top and finished in the oven. I had too many people to feed and not enough time to babysit so I did mine partially on stovetop and partially in the crock pot. Also, traditional Irish Stew is typically made with lamb or mutton. Mutton is nearly impossible to find in Tennessee and lamb is considerably more expensive than my budget allows so I went with a Boston Pork Butt which was on sale at Piggly Wiggly for $.99 a pound.

Ingredients:
Boston Butt Pork Roast (mine was about 8 lbs. but I only used about 4)
6 Red Potatoes
3 Cups of Baby Carrots
2 Bottles of Guinness Extra Stout
1 cup water
1 Tbsp. of Paprika
1 Tsp. Peppercorns
2 Tbsp. Canola Oil
Salt and Pepper to Taste
Garlic Powder to taste

First order of business is to break down your Boston Butt. I use a Chinese Cleaver for this but any good knife will do. Start by cutting the blade bone out of the center of the roast. It's ok to leave a little meat on the bone. We're not professional chefs here and we're going to get some use out of it anyway. Once you've extracted the bone, put it, a Tbsp. of salt, a Tsp. of peppercorns, and two bottles of Guinness Extra Stout into a pressure cooker. Put this on the stove and pressure cook for one hour.

While you're doing that, heat 1 Tbsp. of Canola oil in a large skillet (I used a wok for this), and begin to break down your meat. I cut mine into 1/2 inch or so cubes. Gives them enough size to provide some chew, but not enough to choke your guests. If you want your stew to be extra thick, give the pork a toss in some corn starch before putting it in the skillet. I like a little juice so I skipped this step. Add the paprika and garlic powder and give your cubed pork a quick fry in the oil until you get a decent crust on the outside. This usually takes 3-4 minutes at high heat. When you're done, add your pork to the crock pot.

Add the second Tbsp. of oil to your skillet and toss in the baby carrots. Let those cook while you cut the red potatoes. I just quartered mine but how small you cut them depends on how big your potatoes are and how big your mouth is. Once the potatoes are cut, add them to the carrots and stir to cook. Again, you don't have to cook them soft, just so they have a little browning on the outside. This took 5 minutes or so of cooking. When done, add this to the crock pot.

Add 1 cup of water to the empty skillet and stir with a wooden spoon to get all of the crusty bits left in the bottom up. This should only take a minute or two. Add this liquid to the crock pot and start cooking.

By the time you finish this, your broth should be nearly done in the pressure cooker. Once it's finished, fish out the bone and dump the broth into the crock pot. Stir everything to mix well and cook on low heat for 10 hours.

The resulting stew has a bold body provided by the pork and the stout.