A (Work) Week of Meat

I try to give the whole meat department a good once over, when I go to the store, and a few weeks ago that paid off when I found 7.5 lbs of Boston Butt pork roast for $13.30.  This was actually the smallest cut I could find, and I left without buying it on the first trip because that is a seriously daunting amount of meat.  I was lured back, though, by the promise of not having to cook more than once, and getting to brag about it on this blog.

Recipe 6:  Crock Pot Boston Butt Roast

I wanted to fuss with this thing as little as possible, and make it as versatile as I could, so I used this recipe.  It's so simple, I'll just paraphrase it here:  Put the roast into a pot with onions, crushed garlic, and Worcestershire sauce.   The recipe was for a 4 lb roast, so I doubled everything.

 

Here it is, in all of it's porky glory.  I put it in the crock pot with all of the wrapping still on, just to make sure it would fit. 

 

And it did.  Barely.  

The meat was marbled with fat, which meant that it turned out rather "rich" (read:  greasy) when everything melted.  Unlike with beef shoulder roasts, where I can generally remove a good amount of the fat after it has cooked, that wasn't really an option here.  While it was heavy, I didn't find it unpleasant.

Below are pictures of the meals we made with the behemoth.

Night 1:  Pork on a plate.

For the first night, I just served a chunk of the roast on a plate with the onions on the side. It was extremely tender, and while the meat itself was a little bland, the onions soaked up the Worcestershire sauce nicely. A bite of the pork with a little onion and a little potato was a nice mouthful.

After the first meal, I shredded the rest, which left a good amount of shredded pork.

Night 2:  Pulled Pork Sandwiches

I love sandwiches to stretch meat, because you can use just a little and it still feels like a satisfying meal. 

Night 3:  Pulled Pork Sandwiches ... the Revenge!

I was actually smart enough to put barbecue sauce in the meat while I was reheating it this time.  I should mention that I also drained as much fat as possible from the meat while I was heating it.  That didn't prevent the last few bites of role from being soggy, but it helped.

For the next several days, I made taco meat out of the remaining pork.  To do this I heated it in the microwave enough to pour most of the fat off, then mixed in cumin, seasoning salt, chili powder, and garlic powder before heating it in the oven to finish drying it out.  The first night I let it sit a little too long in the oven, and the edges got too crispy.  Below is a picture of the more successful second attempt.

Night 4:  Taco Salad

Okay, I'll admit, this isn't much of a salad.  Most of the time, I'll put a lot more green in a salad, but I didn't realize we were almost out until after I was committed.  At least the pepper added a few more veggie points.

Night 5:  Quesadillas

And finally, the last of the pork went into quesadialls.  This was a pretty heavy meal, and I probably could have scraped one more dish out of it, but I figured it was time to just be done an move on.

At the end of the day, I would definitely pick up this cut of meat again.  The food all turned out fine, and it was nice to be able to throw something together each night, and not have too many dishes at the end of it. 

Sorry it took so long to write this update.  The boy has been sick, and he's been less tolerant of me using the computer while he sleeps, and I've been less willing to try to type all of this on my tablet.  I will try to put out at least one more post this week (I've already done the next set of recipes).  Thank you for all of the views - it has been very motivating to stick with this blog.

Curried Lentils

Some weeks, I have a lot of banter stored up, but not today, so I'll just cut to the chase:

Recipe 5:  Curried Lentils

For this recipe, I turned once again to Budget Bytes.  I had seen the recipe for curried lentils a few weeks ago, and kept it in mind. Last week I picked up a pack of chicken legs on sale, and had too many for one pot of chicken and dumplings, but too few for two meals with chicken as the main protien. Lentils + chicken seemed like the perfect solution.

I was happy to have an excuse to try the recipe, because we are a lentil eating family. Generally, I'll throw a bag of lentils in the crock pot with some carrots, onions, a bay leaf or oregano, and some broth or bullion. Top that with two pieces of bacon, and you've got a hearty, nutritious
(if somewhat unappealing looking) soup. We are moving out of winter, though, and soon earthy flavors will seem a bit heavy. So another use for lentils was very welcome.The dish went together pretty easily. Often, I find that my cooking times are longer than the recipe calls for, which I think is because I'm still getting used to cooking on stainless steel, so I use lower heat than I really should. In addition to cooking the vegitables longer, I had to boil the lentils maybe 10 minutes longer than recommended, and they were still a bit unevenly cooked. Next time, I might try using a bigger pot or keeping the temperature up a bit (I turned it down to three). I could just be overcooking my lentils when I do them in the crock pot, of course, so maybe they are supposed to retain a bit of resistance.

The flavor was very nice. Two tablespoons of curry powder is quite a bit, so each bite had a nice slow burn. Our son didn't have much that day, but did have some when I ate the leftovers cold as a snack (of course, that may have had more to do with needing to mooch on Mom's food than actually enjoying the flavor).

To me, the one flaw was the amount of tomato sauce. It ended up feeling a bit thick, and I thought the tomato flavor was a little overwhelming. Because the recipe calls for one can of sauce, the next time I make it, I might try doubling all of the other ingredients, and maybe save a little of the liquid the lentils cooked in to thin it a bit.

Overall, though, it was a nice dish that I think will make it into the regular rotation of recipes to make when meat is expensive.

It tastes like burning...

Hey there. I know I said that I would write again on Monday, but life has been a bit hectic. Our son is sick, and hasn't been napping well. I'm trying to be extra quiet so that this nap lasts as long as possible. Let's see if I can get a blog post out before he wakes up! (Edit: I didn't make it, but he is sleeping peacefully for the night after starting antibiotics for an ear infection.)

Recipe 4:  Caramelized Turnips

During my first search for new recipes, I came across one for something like pork shanks and turnips. It made me realize that in my thirty years on earth, I have never knowingly eaten a turnip. So last week when I was at the grocery store I decided to remedy that problem. It is pretty obvious that HEB does not do a brisk business in turnips. The tiny bin in the unfashionable corner of the produce department was half full of dented, topless bulbs, but I felt committed, so I took home four of the nicer looking specimens.

Turnips in hand, I found this recipe.  This is my kind of recipe. Simple ingredients, and the instructions are basically "don't let the food burn".
At this point, I realized that I don't really know if all of the turnip root is edible, so I once again turned to the Internet for answers. This site let me know that I didn't have to peal turnips ... and that I was probably in for some trouble. The mangy roots I had picked up didn't seem to fit the bill of firm, small, young turnips that they recommend. Still, maybe they would turn out okay with sugar on them.
The recipe went together just fine (the one real change I made was to use honey - based on a recommendation from the comments on allrecipes - instead of sugar).  My husband liked it enough to finish his serving. The texture came out like a firm potato or boiled carrot. The flavor as he described it was like a raw broccoli stem. I totally get that description. I also think "peppery" is fair. To my mouth, though, the best comparison is to poison. After about ten bites, I had to stop eating. As soon as I put a bite in, my body had a strong "this is not food" reaction.

So, I'm not going to be rushing out to try turnips again any time soon. I think the fault is mostly in these individual turnips. They were probably too old and too large for a turnip novice like me. At least according tomy favorite nutrition data site I'm not missing much. I'm pretty sure there are more fun ways to get vitamin C and fiber.