Slow Cooker -Pulled Pork and Wing-it Slaw Sandwiches
Ok, okay...I got too greedy last night and ate my sandwich before I remembered to take a picture, and this morning S ate the last end of the bread, so I have nothing to take a new one. So I pulled this photo off the internet. But we all know it - dripping, juicy pork; fresh, crunchy slaw; and some good bread.
Only problem is (see Slow cooker corn chowder post) I am in the hunger period, have minimal food left before I go shopping, and need to figure out a way to make some slaw. I like these periods because it makes me use stuff that otherwise gets caught in the corners of my fridge or freezer. But what I do know is that S doesn't like radishes, and radishes are fixin up to be about the only vegetable I have at the moment. Then I remember, while doing some downward dog in yoga class (clear your mind....clear your mind...but dinner is gonna be so good if only I can think of a way to make slaw!), that I have an unopened bag of snap peas that I am saving for another recipe. I am hesitant to open them lest they go bad before I make the other recipe (gotta go food shopping for the other ingredients first) but desperate times call for desperate measures. Even so -it will be hard to make radishes and snap peas turn into something like cabbage and carrots. So I channel my inner taste of slaw -it needs to be crunchy, mayonaise, some sort of vinegar, and salt and pepper. If I can get those things together it will pass, I think.
So I check my fridge -I have: one pickle, cilantro, radishes, snap peas, mayo, balsamic and apple cider vinegar, salt and pepper. Well, here goes! I used my Vidalia chopper to chop up all the veggies, then diced up the cilantro. I mixed in the mayo, and a bit of balsamic and salt and pepper. There wasn't enough vinegar taste so I added some apple cider vinegar -close! It needed more pepper. And voila -there was some semblance of a slaw that tasted good in its own right (not as crunchy as real slaw but it would do) and would do a fine job rounding out a good pulled pork sandwhich.
Well, I guess on to that part then. Pulled pork in the slow cooker is so damn easy and delicious it makes me curse any time I went to a fancy Brooklyn bbq place and spent $18.95 on a pulled pork sandwich. Seriously, that shit gets dry fast. Make it yourself and you will be eatin finer than the finest bbq dining and simultaneously sit in your shock that you made this with no effort at all.
Ingredients & Directions all in one! -Buy a pork shoulder (of course, you can buy this anytime and freeze it for when you're in a bind, as I am now at the beginning of the month). Put it in the crock pot. Empty a bottle of whatever bbq sauce suits your fancy into the pot. I put some water in the bbq sauce bottle and swish it around to get the extras out, and pour this water into the pot as well, in case just the bbq sauce by itself will dry out. Now, here is a time when high or low matters -my highest recommendation is to put it on low for 8 hours. Then the meat is really melt in your mouth, but still juicy! -when its ready. You can also put it on high for 4 hours if you are in a rush, this way is good too but not as good.
Finally, we had some leftover sourdough bread from the night before (see corn chowder post) and so we cut that up and made some sick sandwiches.
Here's the slaw -might I mention we are also in a dish hunger season (=I needed to do the dishes baddd so hope you don't mind the unaesthetic tupperware. At least its real and not an Italian tupperware).