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.