14 January 2008

Pork - not bbq

It is sometimes hard for me to think about a pork butt and not think about bbq and smoke, but I live in Wisconsin now and it is *cold* outside. Besides the oven does such a nice job of temperature control...

So I was in Knoche's looking for lamb shanks (which are much harder to find than I would expect) and they had some nice pork loin roasts, bone in. They weren't very expensive and I had seen Jamie Oliver do a nice stew with a boned butt. So I bought one thinking about the 1/3 bottle of old red wine sitting on the counter and the bag of peppers in the fridge.

When the time came I salted the roast and browned in my enameled steel casserole and removed it from the pan. In the oil in the pan I sauteed 2 medium onion roughly chopped, a mess of peeled whole garlic and an apple in the oil. To that I added thyme, bay, pepper and salt and a pinch of cinnamon. Back goes the pork, in goes the wine, on goes the top and the whole mess goes into the oven at 300˚F. (note that I changed my mind wrt the peppers - such is Life)

4 hours later I took the thing out and it was falling off the bone - actually it was a little dry. Next time either lower heat (maybe 275 and a bit more patience for the liquid to come to a simmer inside the pan) or start paying closer attention at about 3 hours.

Somewhere early on I found some baby carrots that wouldn't get eaten in a school lunch - so those went in the pan.

I degreased the sauce, removed the bay leaves and pureed the heck out of it in the food processor. This made an amazing rich sauce, which I then mixed with the pulled meat and the dryness was not such an issue any more.

I served it with mashed potatoes and chopped spinach. Zora commented that there was a lot going on with the meat - and she liked it.

Tomorrow we are having tacos with the left over, unsauced meat - stay tuned.

1 comment:

Alan H said...

ive found that if you let the braise cool and sit in the juices over night it helps with dryness as well as adds to the richness and flavor. this is a little hard to do if you dont plan ahead though