hog heaven

Hard up for food ideas but inspired by Dr. Steve's offhand remark, I decided to reach into my freezer and yank out my two giant hunks of Kirkland brand pork sirloin tip roast-- some of the most solid, gristle-and-fascia-free pork you can buy-- and make pulled pork with them. The two hunks together tipped the scales at 7.72 pounds, and because they'd been in the freezer for weeks, they may as well have been granite.

I microwaved the pork for two minutes just to loosen the plastic wrap, then cut long slits into each wrapper and dumped the frozen chunks of meat into my trusty-dusty slow cooker, an appliance I'd inherited from our old house in Alexandria. I set the cooker on 4.5 (out of 5), then added a mess of the following components:

•Mr. Yoshida's barbecue sauce (a black, soy-based marinade somewhat reminiscent of a galbi marinade)

•ketchup (sweetener, basically)

•red wine vinegar (acid to loosen the meat fibers)

•garlic powder

•onion powder

•red chili pepper flakes

•brown sugar

•tarragon (just because)

The nice thing about slow cookers is their "fire and forget" nature. I started the pork at 1:30PM and didn't get back home until around 10:20PM-- almost nine hours.

The results were fantastic. The pork was practically melting apart, and the part of the pork that hadn't been submerged in the sauce had even formed a sort of bark, which I found unbelievable: I didn't know you could obtain bark through any means other than oven-roasting. I pulled the pork chunks out of the sauce, drained them a bit, flaked them into smithereens with two forks, and baptized them with Sweet Baby Ray's Honey Hickory BBQ Sauce. The results were divine. Here, let me thrust your face into my meat:

And here are the pulled-pork sandwiches I made tonight. Below, you see potato-bread buns, sweet pickles, cole slaw, and sharp cheddar, with pulled pork in the starring role:


Dingle-damn delicious.


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