The project of the weekend at our house was hanging black-out curtains in several rooms and renewing some window seals to try to keep the summer heat from raising the temperature inside.
Now we’re waiting with excitement for an air conditioning repair person/hero to come recharge our system and get us back to livable temperatures once again.
When your schnauzer is only sitting next to you to try to steal some air from an oscillating fan, you know your living room is getting a little uncomfortable.
It’s on days like we’ve had lately that I completely lose any desire to cook. I never want to heat up the stove or stand in front of a hot grill.
That’s when the crockpot becomes my best friend.
This week, I made some delicious shredded pork, and it made a ton of food—so much so that I’ll give you a recipe for what to do with the leftovers next week.
This comes from the blog “Lynn’s Kitchen Adventures,” and you can find the original at http://www.lynnskitchenadventures.com/2009/10/slow-cooked-shredded-chipotle-pork-tacos.html.
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Slow-cooked Shredded Chipotle Pork
Ingredients
3-pound pork shoulder roast (mine was closer to five or six pounds)
1 onion, chopped
6 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon basil
1 teaspoon oregano
6 ounces tomato paste
28 ounces diced tomatoes
1 to 2 chipotle chiles in adobo sauce, chopped
Directions
Place the pork roast into your crock pot and dump the rest of the ingredients in around it, spreading the tomato paste out along the top of the roast if necessary.
Cook on low for seven to eight hours.
When it’s done, remove the roast from the liquid into a large pan and discard any big pieces of fat (mine came off really easily because the meat was so tender).
Shred the pork with two forks.
For a delicious sauce to go with the pork, make sure all chunks of fat have been removed from the liquid in the crockpot and pour it into a blender. Blend until smooth and serve it with the pork.
Optional step: To serve this with rice, put the amount of rice you want to make into a saucepan with a lid and then use half water, half liquid from the crockpot to cook it.
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We loved this recipe, and because I found a nice, big roast on sale, we ate on this for quite awhile. The sauce that came out of it was also delicious. I have it in a big Mason jar in the fridge, and we’ve been using it on all kinds of things even now that the pork is gone. I wouldn’t be all that surprised to see Joey eating it over cereal in the morning. It’s pretty yummy.
Next week, I’ll tell you something we did with the leftovers, but we ate this in tortillas with black beans, fresh spinach and guacamole along with rice I made from the liquid in the crockpot. (And, of course, that beautiful red sauce I blended up.) It was really, really good.
And it was nice to have such a great meal without ever having to heat up the kitchen. I’ll take that deal any day.
Lindsey Young is managing editor of The Clarion, the Kansas Publishing Ventures newspaper in Andale. She can be reached at lindseyclarion@gmail.com.
