For Fathers day I wanted to try a new recipe I had found. It required 2 things that make me nervous, A giant slab of meat and the slow cooker. I've found that cooking with the slow cooker is a hit or miss. It's either rockin' or its a disaster so putting a giant slab of meat in it to then either ruin or come out great is extremely nerve wracking.
We love BBQ so it was worth a shot.
I had to actually ask the butcher for this particular cut of pork since it wasn't displayed or packaged. That also meant it was cut to order and I NEVER know how many pounds of something to buy because 1. meat shrinks and 2. if its yummy you want left overs.
I started with 1 onion, sliced in quarters and 2 cups of water with 3 tablespoons vinegar. I rubbed the shoulder with salt and pepper and put it over the onions in the crockpot for 5.5 hours. While it was cooking I started on the BBQ sauce. We like a vinegary spiced up BBQ sauce and this one sounded just right but it was too sweet and very pasty. One thing about me is I NEVER follow a recipe 100% I kind of use it for measurements and ideas and do my own thing. Because I'm not comfortable with this style of cooking just yet I did follow this recipe exactly, until hubby came in for a taste test...I ended up adding much more pepper, black, red and cayenne with a dollop of chili powder thrown in and a small pat of butter, because butter fixes all errors.
After about an hour of simmering and then shredding the pork, the sauce was ready to be added in the crock pot.
The result was a really juicey sauce filled crock pot.
A juicey saucey pulled pork filled brioche roll.
And then came the fries.. These were awesome. They take a little planning because the cut up potatoes have to soak in cold water for at least an hour to dilute the starch.
They are par-fried for 3-4 minute at 300 degrees and then left to slightly cool on a cookie sheet lined with paper towel.
after all batches go for the first round, the oil is cranked up to 400 degrees and cooked until golden and crispity. For well done, this was roughly 6 minutes per batch.
Julia loves fries, and gets them so infrequently that she couldn't even wait for mommy to take a picture, followed by a resounding "mmm yi-yi's" which is french fries in toddler speak.
I served said pork n frites with some fresh yummy green beans but did not of course think to plate it for a picture, next venture I will leave camera work to my hubby, who takes great photos and has an eye for that sort of thing!
*bbq sauce adapted from melskitchencafe.com
*fries adapted from thepioneerwoman.com
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