I’ll preface this with a note that while I consider myself a good cook, I’m not an imaginative cook.
I have found that a 3 or 4 pound pork shoulder and a bottle of commercial sauce in my slow cooker for 8 hours makes a very serviceable barbecue.
I love the ease of the slow cooker and the price of the pork shoulders, though. They’re frequently on-sale at the supermarket and make a great dollar-per-pound meat entree.
My kids are getting tired of having barbecue sandwiches, though.
I need some new recipes for my slow cooker and pork. Maybe carnitas? Something involving rosemary (love rosemary).
I saw Jamie Oliver make Hungarian Goulash in a pot cooked for hours. I bet you could crockpot it easily. Pork shoulder cooked with a LOT of paprika and peppers. I’ll be back when I find the recipe. It looked really yummy.
ETA: Here you go!
I would do cochinita pibil, a famous dish from the Yucatan.
Paraphrasing Rick Bayless’s recipe, you basically do the following:
Line a slow-cooker with banana leaves (usually found in the frozen section of your grocery store if you have a large indigenous Latino or Asian population. Otherwise, go to ethnic markets to find it.) If you can’t find banana leaves, don’t worry. They are optional, although I strongly recommend it, for this recipe.
Take half of a 3.5 ounce package of achiote paste (El Yucateco is the most common around here), dissolve it in 1/2 cup of lime juice and a couple teaspoons salt to make a smooth paste. If you happen to find the juice of bitter (Seville aka sour) oranges/naranja agria, use that instead of the lime juice.
Put the shoulder (about 3-4 pounds) into the banana-leaf-lined cooker. Pour achiote-juice paste over pork and coat well with hands. Take a white onion, cut into 1/4 inch half moons and scatter all around the pork. Add 1/2 cup water. You can also lay a couple of banana peppers over the top. Fold over the banana leaves and cook for 6 hours or until it’s fall-off-the-bone done.
Traditionally, this is served with pickled red onions, habanero salsa, and corn tortillas.
I love making a vaguely mediteranian pork shoulder.
Take a head of garlic, mince half and poke the other half into holes made with a paring knife.
Make a smear of the garlic with some rosemary, thyme, sun-dried tomatoes in oil, salt pepper, red-peppar flakes and Olive oil. Smear it around the shoulder. Dump in some red wine and Balsamic vinegar, and some of the cute little onions peeled, and some potatoes to later mash, then let it braise all day.
P.S. full disclosure: It’s actually best on Lamb-shanks, but it’s excellent on any braising piece of meat.
The rule of thumb for cooking that is liquid, acid, and aromatics. You’ll note that every recipe so far here has stuck to those principles. When I do something quick and simple I just toss a pork roast in with a can of diced tomatoes, some chopped celery and onions, and some kind of flavorful liquid. That’s about as straight forward as they come.
Liberal, can you expand on that? (The English teacher in me!)
I have a Weber, and know about indirect grilling. What are hickory and oak coals? The most exotic charcoal my grocery store carries is Lazarus mesquite.
Liberal,that’s a great thing to do to a shoulder,but slow cookers need no fire maintenance.
I say nix on too much liquid.Doing whole shoulders in a slow oven (220F) sealed in foil with rub only yield maybe 4c of liquid when done.I’ve read complaints with slow cookers that the flavour leaves the meat and is in the liquid.
Around here, it’s called “pit cooking”. Pork shoulder is cooked in a brick fire pit, and hickory and oak coals are the red-hot embers of hickory and oak wood. The meat comes out smoked and tender, with a seared reddish-brownish outer layer all around.
A couple of weeks ago, I put a hunk o’ pork in the crockpot with 3/4 of a big can (16 oz?) of green enchilada sauce. Drained and shredded the pork, added the rest of the sauce, and had awesome tacos and burritos. Very tasty.
I have never done pork shoulder but the two things most reliable with pork legs, fillets, chops, ribs are char sui and cooking it slathered in spiced marmalade.
I was going to suggest cochinita pibil but got beaten to it, but how about fake kalua pork? Toss a goodly amount of coarse salt all over the pig, and add in maybe a cup of water with a tad of liquid smoke. To approximate young taro leaves (“luau leaves”-- same t’ing, yeah, locals?), maybe toss in some spinach in the last 1/2 hour. Have a luau.
I’ve not played with pork shoulder, either, but this thread has inspired me. I need a meat dish to go with the birthday girl’s request of Alton Brown’s Baked Macaroni and Cheese for her birthday dinner on Sunday. About 20 people, so I’m doing a quintuple batch of mac ‘n’ cheese that will take quite a while and all the space in the oven. A Crock-Pot pork shoulder is the perfect solution!
What would y’all suggest for accompanying rich decadent mac ‘n’ cheese (the old fashioned kind with crunchy bits on top)? I’m thinking I want to up the acid and maybe the sweetness to balance out all the salty umame goodness.
How 'bout canned crushed pineapple? What seasonings would play well with pineapple and pork?
