Sarah's Pork Roast

Last Friday, I was heading home after a long week in court for a jury trial. I was feeling pretty exhausted, and I wasn't looking forward to eating another take-out dinner, which is what we primarily subsist on when I am at trial. The worst part about it was that I knew that I had a pork shoulder sitting in the fridge. I really wanted some pork slathered in barbecue sauce. But I knew that making it would take several hours. And I was starving.

In my mind's eye, as I was sitting on the bus home, I opened the fridge and stared at that raw pork shoulder, longingly. Then, as I got off the bus, took the elevator to get to my floor, and walked down the hallway towards our apartment, I could smell the aroma of meat - wonderful, wonderful meat. I opened the door and was reminded in yet another way of why I love my wife. She made the pork.

Sarah's Pulled Pork Roast:

1. rough chop veggies: she cut up into big chunks some onions, carrots, and celery. and she put them on the bottom of the crock pot. 
2. pork: put that on top of the veggies.
3. seasonings: I think she put a bay leaf, some pepper, and garlic powder. I'm not sure what else. 
4. water: she put in enough to cover it all. 
5. time: she got the pork cooking in the crock pot on low for about 5 hours.
6. potatoes: about an hour before I got home, she cut some potatoes into large chunks and dropped those in the crock pot. she wanted to give the potatoes about two hours to cook, but i got home earlier than she expected. 

She was able to pull the pork apart super easy. And, unlike when I do it, she put the pulled pork into a pretty vessel (our souffle dish), which made for pretty presentation. The pork was just as I had imagined it would be, back when I was thinking about it on the bus. It was exactly what I needed to start recovering from the last week of work. Plus, this gave me a chance to try two new sauces. 

The barbecue sauce I wanted to try was a Memphis style barbecue sauce. I don't remember where I got this, but I am sure that I bought it in Iowa. It could have been at the Dubuque Wal-Mart or the Hy-Vee. Either way, I thought it would be good with the pork, and it was. The sauce by itself had that nice combination of tomato-y-ness and vinegar tanginess. Then, when paired with the pork, the sauce became something more. The tomato flavor became more savory, and the tanginess had more pucker to it. It was a really nice surprise.

The sauce was really thin, almost watery. The pork did a good job of soaking it up. But it's thin consistency makes me think that it will do really well as a sauce to mop on some ribs as they cook, which is what I plan to do next with this sauce.

With the barbecue sauce was this hot sauce. I bought this at a hunting goods store in Wisconsin. I don't know why, but hot sauce makers all seem to enjoy the fact that eating too much hot sauce can be painful both on the way in and on the way out.

This hot sauce is called Butt Burner. However, from what I have found, hot sauces with anal references are generally not that hot. For example, this one calls itself a jalapeno pepper sauce, and jalapeno sauces are generally not as hot as the habanero sauces I typically enjoy.

Overall, the Butt Burner was ok. It had a lot of spiciness of the peppercorn/mustard variety. But it wasn't hot pepper hot. There was a crispness to it that was almost citrus-y, and it played nice with the memphis style barbecue sauce's relative darkness. When I turn the leftover pork into tacos, I think this hot sauce will actually work quite well.