Pork Roast Slow Cooker

This is a recipe for my brother-in-law. We were talking about pork loin the other day, so I thought I'd post a super simple crock pot recipe. It requires minimal effort and minimal touching of raw meat, not that he is averse to either.

This recipe should serve a family of six, if four of them are kids, as is the case in my brother-in-law's family. But, that is just a guess. I rarely cook for more than Sarah and me.

I usually put this together in the mornings in the winter. If you think the smell of cooked pork is nice, I would say that cooking this makes your house smell nice. And although it probably only negligibly raises the ambient temperature inside, it does make the house feel all warm.

Pork Roast Slow Cooker Recipe:

1. 2 lbs pork blade loin. Put this in the bottom of your crock pot. Sometimes, there is some sort of plastic thing poked into the meat. I think it is a pop up timer or something. Pull it out.
2. 4 carrots. Peel and break them up into big chunks. Throw them in the crock pot.
3. 3 celery stalks. Wash these. Cut off any nasty end parts. Break them into big chunks. Throw them in the crock pot.
4. 1/2 a medium onion. Give these a quick chop. Throw them in the crock pot.
5. 3 garlic cloves. Rough chop these up into smaller pieces. Throw them in the crock pot.
6. 1/4 t thyme. You can skip this if you don't have it.
7. 1 bay leaf. You can skip this if you don't have it.  The addition of thyme and bay leaf were somewhat arbitrary in this recipe. To be honest, I can rarely tell when something has or hasn't had bay leaf added to it.
8. 1/4 t pepper. The pepper is a must, if you ask me. I love pepper. This may have something to do with the fact that I rarely add salt to my cooking anymore, because we are trying to reduce our salt intake.
9. 2 C water. I am not exactly sure how much water I put in. The key is to - well, there really is no key. I took a pint glass from the drying rack near the sink, filled it with water and dumped it (slowly) in the crock pot. It looked it could use more, so I added maybe another quarter of a glass worth of water. Then put the lid on and set the heat to low.
10. Cook with crock pot on low for the day. Mine ended up in the crock pot for over ten hours, but the reason for that is not culinary. I had a meeting that ran long at the end of the workday. Then, I somehow lost three hours at Ikea.

If you feel like it, you can give this a stir or try to kind or rotate everything around every couple of hours. You don't really need to do it, but I usually do.

I used pork blade loin because I could not find pork loin, which is what my brother-in-law and I had discussed. I could find loin chops and tenderloin, but no loin. I could have asked the butcher, but I hate asking the butcher for anything. Mostly, this is because I dislike people, as a general proposition.

Other things that I like to do with this are to add some potatoes towards the end. Usually, when I am about two hours from making it home from work, I call Sarah and have her add the potatoes. We usually use small red potatoes that have been cut into large chunks. Russets or Idaho potatoes will probably not be a good option here. I think they would disintegrate, which would be ok if this were a soup. This is not a soup.

When I serve it, I usually throw the celery away. It's soggy and gross. On TV, the chefs tell you to throw away the carrots and onions too. But we like them. And it's about the only way that I ever see Sarah eat carrots.

Depending on how long you've cooked this pork and how much fatty goodness there is in it, you can either slice it or pull it apart by fork/knife. Mine pulled apart super easy. It is such a gratifying feeling.

I put Cookie's on the pork and served it with a side salad. I don't add the barbecue sauce until the pork gets to the table. That way, we can turn the leftovers into pork tacos tomorrow.