I’ll try the boneless ribs next time…it seemed that by the time I got done trimming, I had a pound-and-a-half pile of fat that I paid for that went to waste.
Thanks guys!
I think my butt’s going to the store.
I followed the recipe and used pork shoulder/butt.
The nice thing about butt is that if you look around you can find it crazy cheap sometimes. The Mexican market by us will have it on sale about once a month for around $1.15/lb, sometimes less.
Nice. I haven’t seen prices like that for about three or four years. When I first started learning barbecue in about 2005, 2006, $0.99/lb for pork shoulder was a reasonable deal, though you could find it as low as $0.79/lb. Now, I swear, anything under $2/lb is a deal. It’s like pork prices doubled in the last six or seven years. (Same with beef, seen a huge increase in beef prices–at least among the cheaper, stewing and braising cuts. I used to be able to find boneless short ribs at $2.49/lb. Now it’s about $4.29/lb. Chicken is the only one that has stayed real cheap.)
Laugh if you will, but I usually only buy organic meats and dairy products.
I’m not going to laugh. There’s certain items I pay a premium for, and certain items I don’t. But even fancy-ass Berkshire or Duroc pork shoulder is under three bucks a pound (at least around here–sales will get those cuts down to $2.49/lb, although they are hardly ubiquitous.)
Knock yourself out. I’m not about to tell anyone what they should buy with their own money or what they should eat.
I rarely have any fat to trim off the boneless ribs, and they’re a lot easier to cut into manageable pieces. It usually ends up being about $5.50 a pack and that’s sufficient for one recipe.
I most recently bought and used “country style ribs” from Costco. They came in about a 7 pound pack, and they were not ribs at all. It was just pork shoulder, cut into thick strips and almost all the fat cut off. It cost a bit more than plain shoulder, but it was worth it not to pay for the excess fat and to reduce my work cutting up the meat.
I like this idea a lot. I had to freakin’ wrastle with that pork shoulder to cut it up, as per my 2nd note to self, above. It was a not just a lot of work, but a lot of fairly difficult work (as such type of work goes).
You could also buy shoulder steaks to make it easier. Did you buy bone-in shoulder? Boneless shoulder is pretty easy to cut up. I’m not sure why you were wrestling with it. First cut into steaks, then strips, then cubes.
In addition, today’s pork butt is only part of the shoulder, which is divided into two main cuts: the Picnic and Boston Butt. The picnic is the shank end of the shoulder, and the butt is the joint end of the shoulder.
I forgot to add, I am making John’s recipe (more or less) tonight. I grilled the pork shoulder (cut in 2" cubes) on a gas grill instead of in a skillet, and I use some cumin, but otherwise it is pretty much the same. Still has a couple of hours to simmer, but it tastes good already.
Like everyone else who is ‘cool’ and ‘with-it’, I stayed home last night and cooked chile verde. Saturday night, beautiful 65 degrees in November(!) and I’m at the grocery.
Anyhow, it turned out great. Like with most of my cooking, I used the OP’s recipe mostly as an ingredient list but made some changes to proportions and seasoning. This will be a long one but my intention is to illustrate how even significant changes to a recipe can work well.
I used about 3/4 lb tomatillos, roasted with the garlic in the broiler as directed.
Boneless pork shoulder butt, a bit under 3lbs before moderate trimming, is a great cut for this dish. I found it was a very reasonable $1.89/lb.
I used far more poblanos, about 1.75 lbs for 8 peppers or so. These were roasted on the range, bagged, peeled, seeded, stemmed and tossed into the blender. Also blended were about 3/4 bunch of cilantro leaves, five cloves broiled garlic and tomatillos and some broth.
The chicken stock I was so certain I had, I don’t even have to look turned out to be beef broth. One 14oz can was used for this dish.
Next up, pork prep. Again, the boneless butt has got to be ideal for this. Cut a 1-2inch steak off the shoulder, lay flat, trim as desired (not too much), then cut the steak into chunks. I peppered the bottom of my utility skillet and heated until I was sneezing. Tossed in the first batch of pork, no added oil, salted with Goya Adobo con Pimento and peppered the top of the chunks again. This took four batches, each with 8-12 chunks. I think grilling the meat would be great but I got started way too late at night for that. I will say that the smoke generated by the pan browning was impressive and two of my smoke detectors were going off. One thing I did goof up on was immediately washing the pan after the pork was done. As soon as it hit the water, I remembered I wanted to use the fond for the onions. Let’s just say that bourbon and beer were on the dinner guest list and they arrived early.
I heated a couple glugs of olive oil in the stock pot and added about 1.5lb chopped spanish onion. While they were sweating, I chopped four jalapenos, retaining half the seeds and membranes for heat. Once the onions were a bit softened, I added the jalapenos, three cloves minced garlic and my spices. I seldom measure but it was some more pepper, cumin, thyme and Mexican oregano, the last two ground from whole in the mortar/pestle. All of this smelled absolutely divine before giving way to the choking, sneezing, sniffling chemical warfare tactics of the coalition forces of black pepper and chile and thermal energy.
Added the pork and the salsa and some more broth and we simmered away, stirring every half hour or so.
Added 1lb chopped carrot after 90 mins, cook for another hour.
This came out darker than I expected but really tastes awesome. If I hadn’t made it myself, I’d swear there is added sugar as the roasted poblanos and tomatillos really sweeten up and the carrot doesn’t hurt, either. I found it a bit meat-heavy texturally and would add some zucchini with the carrot next time. I just tasted it again (cold) and it really is quite nice with heat undeniably present. Made this way, chile verde is pretty labor intensive with a lot of prep but so clearly worth it. A friend driving from out west recently brought me a 32oz jar of genuine Hatch chile and I used it to make a couple chile verde variants, including with some pork shoulder. While that is easier, of course, (the poblano roast and peel is not a two minute job*, and I wouldn’t miss that weird sticky/slimy tomatillo film), this is loads better. I finally took it off the fire at 1am, waited 15 mins till it was cool enough to touch and put away two bowls. I also made this avocado, onion, palm heart salad but it seems to have wandered off before the chile was done.
*Anyone have a good method of peeling these? I just use a paper napkin and wipe the skins off but it is messy.
If you are blending the chiles, you could just run the puree through a food mill to remove the skins and seeds, rather than playing with roasted chiles.
(BTW, I’ll be by later for a bowl of chile verde. Should I bring corn tortillas?)
~VOW
I also made this recipe on Friday night. I used pork loin instead of shoulder, but otherwise changed nothing. I used poblanos. Eating the leftovers today, I found that the once zesty and wonderful thing I had eaten Friday was no more. There was hardly any flavor at all. Crazy, expecially considering I had family hovering in my kitchen with tortilla chips trying to eat the verde sauce straight out of the blender. What happened during that day and a half in the fridge?
Resurrecting this thread to say–THAT IS ONE AWESOME RECIPE!!!