Sometimes I just run out of steam when it comes to thinking up stuff for dinner. Hey, it happens to the best of us now & then..... We had tacos last night so sloppy joes tonight was just too much ground beef too soon. I thought grilled chicken, but I had some
Hawaiian Rice Balls left and wanted to make something that would go well with them. And then it came to me! Teriyaki Pulled Pork!!! I keep pork carnita meat in the freezer on a regular basis because it's really a good, all-purpose pork to have around - plus, it's usually pretty cheap.
I got this stuff back in April when it was $1.48 a pound. Don't worry if you have it frozen - you don't need to defrost it for this dish - let the crock pot do the work for you. You'll need to start with a "family size" package of meat - you could use beef or chicken too, but I opted for pork tonight.
Turn the crock pot on HIGH. It's ok, we're just warming it up until the meat can be placed in it. Now, remove the outer plastic wrap from the meat and place the whole thing, styro tray and all, in your sink and run cool water over it - this helps dislodge the meat from the styro tray.
Next, flip the meat over, remove the tray and adjust the water till it's barely warm. This will allow you to pull the plastic covered absorbing material off without it tearing and creating a HUGE mess.
Once you've removed that stuff, coat the meat with some salt & pepper on one side. Turn it over and place it in the crock pot and add salt & pepper to the other side of the meat. Don't worry that it sort of sticks up a little... less than 30 minutes in the crock pot & you'll be able to break it apart enough that it'll settle down to the bottom of the crock. Just remember to put the lid on it so the heat gets to it evenly.
Now, take a break - read a magazine, do a puzzle... or you can do what I did - water plants, pick tomatoes, take a picture of the sunflower boquet and try to fix the pepper grinder. I watered the garden plants that are in the bucket. While doing so I noticed quite a few of the orange tomatoes were ready to go as well as one of the little red "Patio" variety. After watering I picked these - don't they look great??? And the tiny orange ones are SO sweet!!! The red one was just over an inch in diameter - perfect bite sized tomatoes!
Here's the boquet... these just make me happy!
After that I tried to fix my pepper grinder. This is just one of those "disposable" ones from Costco... It got dropped and the top cracked inside... as a result we were getting a LOT of large chunks of pepper. That's all fine & well if you like to chew the peppercorns. However, there's a lot of food around here that needs a more powdery type of pepper so I decided to attempt to fix it. I took the top off and used Gorilla Glue to run a fine bead all around the post of the grinder. And by the way, I'm happy to report that the glue held and we're back to having appropriately sized ground pepper.
If you've never used Gorilla Glue, please, do yourself a favor and go get some. It comes in MANY different styles and you can find it in the paint section at Home Depot - at least that's where I found it last time. It's an AMAZING glue - the variety that I got doesn't dry quite as fast as Krazy Glue, but the holding power is so much better. I'm sure they even make a variety that's a quick dry like Krazy Glue.
After all of that, it had been less than 30 minutes and I was able to push the pork down in the crock pot. Oh - take a look at those cookie jars in the background.... I'll tell you about those another time.
Place the lid on and walk away... let it cook like this, on high, for several hours. If you're going to cook this while you're gone, cook it on low and leave it all day. If you're home, you can cook it on high and you can start it later in the day. I started it at noon.
Next, you can either ignore it and do the rest of the work later, OR you can do some prep work so that all you have left to do later is cook your side dishes. I opted to do some of my prep work early. For the rest of the pork dish, you'll need the following - Lawry's Teriyaki marinade, some pineapple and an onion.
This was a pretty large onion so I will only be using half of it. Cut the onion in half, removing any tough papery layers. Slice half of it lengthwise into strips. Now you can wrap up the other half and refrigerate it for later. I opted to dice it up and store it for use in other things... like breakfast burritos or my breakfast potatoes.
I try to keep some diced onion in the fridge all the time just for these type of things. Just cover & refrigerate the onions till later. Set aside the marinade and the pineapple for use later as well. In addition to the rice balls I decided to serve steamed broccoli and carrots with this.
Start by cutting some peeled carrots into about 3" lengths, then cut in half and then each half in quarters or thirds - basically, you want fairly even pieces so they cook at the same rate.
Next, take a head of broccoli and cut the florets down through the stem .
Place these in a bowl, and cover with plastic wrap and stick in the fridge for later.
About an hour after you first put the meat in the crock pot it should start smelling pretty good - Now is the time to break up all the individual pieces and move them around so the juices circulate.
Now go ahead and add the FULL bottle of the marinade. Don't worry about how much liquid there is, you want it all in there so it permeates the meat (and it'll pretty much all get soaked up in the end). At this point you can leave it for several hours - until about 30 minutes before you want to serve dinner - I planned to serve it around 6 tonight. I usually only move the pieces of meat around a few times during the cooking process, so that each piece gets equal time in the sauce.
About 30 minutes before you want to serve dinner, take a couple of forks and start pulling the chunks of meat apart, sort of shredding them up. Let the shredded, aka pulled, pork sit and simmer a little longer in the teriyaki sauces with the lid on the crock pot. If you taste it at this point it will seem quite salty - as if you OVER salted it. Don't worry. The sweetness of the Rice Balls will counteract the salty flavor of the pork and it'll end up being that perfect sweet & salty combination that we all (well nearly all) love. Trust me on this one! But... if you still worry about salt content you can always salt it AFTER it's cooked completely, or not at all. I'm just sayin' you have options here.
Place the veggies in the steamer and set over high heat.
While those are cooking, add a tablespoon of butter along with a little olive oil to a saute pan.
When the butter is all melted, add the sliced up onions. Cook these until they're just starting to caramelize around the edges and are getting translucent.You want to make sure they're good & tender, but still have their shape & texture - the last thing you want is mushy onions...
Add the onions to the pulled pork.
And mix it all up.
Now, you can add the pineapple at this point as well - OR, if you're not so keen on the pineapple, you can set it aside and let folks add it if they want it. I served it on the side because dad doesn't care for it that much and LD would eat it all given the opportunity.
Serve it up with the rice balls and the steamed veggies. YUM!!!
