Slow Cooked Sweet Barbacoa Pork

About two weeks ago, someone on the GP board posted a link to Gina's Skinny Recipes and I've been cooking recipes from there ever since. Tonight I made this barbacoa pork, cilantro lime rice and Cuban black beans. Holy cow, it was good! In fact, I've made about ten recipes from this site and they have all been great. All of her recipes have the Weight Watchers point counts and most of them have the calories and other nutritional information.

The only I change I made in the pork was to use a regular Diet Coke instead of Coke Zero.

Slow Cooked Sweet Barbacoa Pork
Gina's Weight Watcher Recipes
Servings: about 10 • Serving Size: 3 oz • Old Points: 4.5 pts • Points+: 5 pts
Calories: 202.5 • Fat: 6.3 g • Protein: 26.2 g • Carb: 11.5 g • Fiber: 0.6 g
Adapted from Favorite Family Recipes

Marinade:

* 2.5 lbs pork loin roast, all fat trimmed
* salt and pepper
* garlic powder
* 6 oz Coke zero
* 1/4 cup brown sugar (unpacked)
* 1/4 cup water

Step 2

* 8 oz Coke zero
* 6 oz can sliced green chilies
* 8 oz tomato sauce
* 1 chipotle chile in adobo sauce
* 1/8 tsp garlic powder
* 1/8 tsp cumin
* 1/8 tsp chipotle chili powder (to taste)
* salt and pepper to taste
* 1/3 cup brown sugar (unpacked)


Season pork with salt, pepper and garlic powder and place in the crock pot. Add 6 oz of coke and 1/4 cup of brown sugar. Marinate refrigerated for a few hours or overnight turning meat at least once while marinating.

Remove crock from refrigerator, add water, and cook on high for about 3-4 hours (or until it shreds easily). Remove pork from crock pot and discard any liquid left in the pot. Shred pork with two forks.

Step two: In the crock pot, combine 8 oz coke, green chilies, tomato sauce, chipotle chile, garlic powder, cumin, chipotle chili powder and remaining brown sugar.

Put shredded pork back in the crock pot and combine with sauce. Adjust salt and pepper to taste, cover and cook on high 1-1/2 hours more.

Past Due Updates

I've been doing a pretty good job of making the recipes, albeit not always in the week posted, but I have been lousy at posting my updates. So I have two today.

Apple Pork Roast: This was delicious, however, I think I was running on fumes when I made it. I was planning on having it for Sunday lunch, so I was going to put it in the crockpot before I went to bed and it would be perfect when I got home from church. Like some kind of fool, I put the crockpot on high. So, needless to say, when I got up at 7:00, it was already done and the apples were cooked to squish. I just took it out and put it in the refrigerator. Then when I got home, I reheated it in the microwave and fried some apples in butter as a little side dish. We loved it.

Creme Brulee French Toast: I made this dish the following Sunday. We enjoy breakfast food a lot, and really anything that will let us have bacon. The french toast was so rich and the caramel sauce made it so that it didn't need any syrup (not that that stopped J). This dish would make an excellent Christmas morning breakfast, especially since you make it the night before and just bake in the morning.

Souffle #2 and Apple Pork Roast

The broccoli souffle was even better than the sweet potato! Mmm. I used fresh steamed broccoli and topped it with panko bread crumbs drizzled with olive oil for a nice crispy topping. (Crushed corn flakes is another idea that I've been meaning to try.) I've actually made a similar dish before as a casserole - same mix of cream soup, mayo and cheese, with chicken cubes and frozen veggies. It's one of my favourite comfort foods.

The apple glazed pork roast was also delicious. I didn't start it until the afternoon so I set the cooker on high, and it cooked in less than 4 hours.

We had the roast and broccoli with wild rice. A great hearty meal.

Update-palooza

This is a bit ridiculous, I know (and I'm sorry!), but I have a few updates to make. I figured I'd do them all in one post to try and be as least obnoxious as possible. I'll also keep the pictures down to one or two per recipe.

In order of first appearance on the blog...

Grilled Salmon with Blueberry Pan Sauce
We enjoyed this! I decided to use the entire amount of balsamic since we both love it, and I'm glad that I did. It was very blueberry-y (obviously), but I thought it paired really well with the salmon. Unfortunately, I didn't have any mint (and didn't want to make a special trip to just get that), so I made it without. As you can see, I served it over a bed of fresh spinach. Yum!

Thai Ground Pork Salad
We seriously loved this. I don't really have much else to say other than that. I pretty much made it exactly as written, except omitted the cilantro (my food arch nemesis... but seriously, the only ingredient I've ever come into contact with that I don't like. And by don't like, I mean despise) and made up for it with extra basil and mint. I also added a bit of extra Sriracha and jalapeno because we like things spicy. Oh, and as you can see I had to use iceberg lettuce instead of Boston (sad!). AND I used regular onion instead of shallots. Hmm, I guess I changed more than I thought, but nothing too drastic. Anyway, we loved it and are looking forward to the next time we have it!


Thumbprint Cookies
YUM! I made these today, and had to restrain myself to only eat two. They're delicious. I had a haunting suspicion that I'd love them given the Nutella and espresso and hazelnuts, and I was definitely correct. So tasty, and I love that they're semi-healthy. (Not really, but they're from Cooking Light, so I can believe that... right?!) I put a little extra salt in because I love when certain cookies have a bit of saltiness to them, and I was so glad I did. It worked perfectly with the sweet Nutella.

Lettuce Wraps

I was skeptical when I started to make this recipe, but I was pleasantly surprised.

As I was getting ready to make this last night, I realized that I didn't have sriracha, but I did have spicy Thai chili garlic sauce. For future reference, this substitution does not provide enough heat, but an extra sprinkle or two of cayenne pepper did the trick.

This was my first time eating a lettuce wrap and I loved it. However, J was not a fan of the lettuce wrap. He liked the meat (although he added even more pepper - I swear he doesn't have any taste buds left), but the whole rolling things up bit was too fussy for him. If I make it again, I will have to find another way to serve it. Maybe I can turn it into a Thai taco salad.

Pigging out

I love Thai food, but I've never made it myself. So I had every intention of being diligent and following this week's recipe to a tee.

But then we went grocery shopping. At first, we couldn't find the ground pork. We would have looked harder until we saw this:

3kg (about 6.6lb) of pork. At $1.72 a pound. We couldn't resist.

"We can grind it with our KitchenAid mixer meat grinder attachment!" said we.

Well, we got home, and remembered what a pain it was to clean that thing. So we went and cut up a quarter of that pork into cubes instead. The rest was portioned and frozen.

(I shall be grateful if more pork recipes are posted over the next few weeks.)

Anyway, despite all this, we loved the recipe. I absolutely loved the sauce. I was actually surprised at how well the sauce coated the meat; I was skeptical when I realized that the recipe didn't call for the meat to be marinated. I'm sure I would have loved it more if we had actually used ground pork, which would have soaked up even more sauce. I have some leftover pork, which I shall be packing with some rice and salad for lunch later this week.

Not pretty. But still delicious.

Thai food is teh awesome.

Like Alyson, I really love the flavours of Thai food.  The blend of spicy, sour, sweet and salty are like magic in my mouth.

We've never done lettuce wraps before, but you can bet we'll be doing them again.  With this recipe, because man, these are good.

I made the recipe as written which was great, since ground pork was on sale this week.

I served the wraps with a mango salad.

Thai Ground Pork Salad

It was hard to pick a recipe to post. I decided to first narrow it down to a protein that we haven't used yet.

The first thing I thought of was pork. Well, that should be easy, right? Wrong. Then I had to decide on whether I wanted to do a loin, or ribs, or sausage, or chops, etc... whew.

So, when I was getting frustrated by looking up too many things online, I decided to open my Food & Wine 2010 Annual Cookbook. Looking at their pictures always makes me drool. I flipped right to the pork section, and while it was still difficult to pick something, I decided on this Thai ground pork salad. I'm obsessed with Thai food right now (have been for a few years, actually), and we haven't done anything similar yet, so I thought it was perfect.

If you don't like heat, feel free to reduce or omit the jalapeño (duh). I hope you all enjoy!

Thai Ground Pork Salad
From Food & Wine Annual Cookbook, 2010 (pg. 170)

Total time: 40 min
6 servings

2 pounds ground pork
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 small shallots, minced
1 jalapeño, seeded and minced, plus sliced jalapeño for garnish
Juice of 1 lime, plus lime wedges for serving
2 tablespoons Asian fish sauce
1 teaspoon light brown sugar
1 teaspoon Sriracha chile sauce, plus more for serving
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1/2 cup chopped cilantro
1/2 cup chopped mint
1/2 cup chopped basil
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1 cup chopped salted peanuts
1 head Boston or other leafy lettuce

In a bowl, mix the pork, garlic, shallots, and minced jalapeño. In a small bowl, whisk the lime juice, fish sauce, brown sugar, and the 1 teaspoon of Sriracha.

In a skillet, heat the oil. Add the pork mixture; cook over high heat, stirring to break up the meat, until no pink remains, 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the lime mixture. Let stand 5 minutes. Transfer to a bowl; stir in the herbs. Season with salt and pepper. Top with peanuts and sliced jalapeños. Serve with lime wedges, Sriracha, and lettuce for wrapping.

Pair a vivid, lightly sweet Riesling with this meal.

Cumin Kebabs

I missed last week's salmon because I was out of town, so I was very excited to get back in with this week's recipe. Only one problem; I don't eat red meat. After looking at the lamb in the grocery store, I decided to substitute pork. I am sure the lamb is delicious and that I would love it - it just wouldn't love me back.

I made the marinade last night, using 1/4 teaspoon of ground ginger since I didn't have fresh. That is one thing that I very rarely have on hand and I hate buying a whole finger of it just to use once. The pork had almost 12 hours to get awesome.

kebabs ready for the grill

We live in a condo unit and can't have a grill, so I have the biggest George Forman grill that I could find. I seriously love this thing. I used it to cook dinner every night for a week after I got it.

Lean, mean, fat-reducing grilling machine

I served these with parmesan couscous. The meat was so tender and flavorful, the onions got very sweet on the grill and, along with the pepper, gave a nice crunch to contrast with the pork. Definitely a keeper.