photo by Cliff Hawkins
In my new neighborhood of Kensington I still have not found a great butcher like Jerry at Emily’s pork store but I set out yesterday and found the “United Meat Market” on Prospect Park West in Windsor Terrace. The place is not only a butcher but a sandwich spot which lots of locals frequent. They sold me a nice pork butt with the bone in. Since I no longer have a grilling area at my apartment I have had to change my cooking technique a little for oven cooking.
Ingredients:
One 28-ounce can whole tomatoes, lightly crushed, with their juices
2 teaspoons Spanish smoked paprika
3-4 chipotles in adobo (depending on your heat tolerance)
2 tablespoons sorghum molasses
1/2 cup cider vinegar (plus more to taste)
One 9 lb pork butt (a shoulder would work good too)
2 teaspoons kosher salt (plus more to taste)
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 1/2 tablespoons canola oil
4 large plum tomatoes, cored
1 medium yellow onion, trimmed, peeled, and quartered
1 small bunch cilantro
6 cloves of garlic
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/ can of beer (I happened to use budweiser)
enough flour tortillas to feed your group of diners (you should be able to make roughly 30 tacos with that much meat)
First thing I did was wash the pork but under cold water. Then pat dry and season with kosher salt and pepper. Preheat your oven to 250 degrees. If you have a big cast iron pot this is the time to break it out. You will need roughly a 9 quart pot for this. I used a deep roasting pan… Heat oil in the pan, just before it starts to smoke add the pork to the pan. You want to sear it on all sides – about 3-4 minutes per side. Then take that out of the pan and let it rest. Add onions and let then cook for about three minutes, then add garlic and let caramelize. Then add the tomatoes, molasses, brown sugar, cider vinegar, paprika, chipoltes and simmer over medium heat. Let this cook for about 10 minutes to combine flavors a little…. then add the pork butt to the mix. Cover with foil and place in the oven. I have a thermometer with a probe so that it can be in the oven and I can monitor the temp. I cooked mine for about 5-6 hours on the lower heat. You can cook it faster, but with food sometimes you need to be patient. Make sure the meat reaches 160 degrees.
For Slaw:
1/2 small red cabbage
1/2 large green cabbage
3-4 medium carrots
2 tablespoons mayo
1 tablespoon whole grain mustard
1/4 cider vinegar
salt and pepper to taste
I have a mandolin for shredding and slicing (these are great and can make identical slices for many things). So using the mandolin I shred the cabbages and carrots into a bowl. Then add other ingredients and toss.
Beans:
1 can black beans
1 can back eyed peas
1 small onion rouch chopped
2 cloves garlic
1 jalepeno seeded and diced
1 tablespoon molasses
1 tablespoon butter
juice of 1/2 lime
salt and pepper to taste
In a small saucepan melt butter, then add onions and garlic. Cook until starting to turn brown (this can be a fine line between getting burned so watch this) then add beans (I always rinse my beans so they do not have the “sauce” that comes in the can), jalepeno, molasses and lime juice. Let simmer over low heat.
When cooking beans I feel that they need to marinate together for a while. So in this case where I am cooking pork for a long time I will simmer the beans for about 1-2 hours to let them thicken slightly, then take them off the heat and just reheat when ready to serve.
Cook white rice to go with this… 1 to 2 ration of rice to water. Bring water to boil, stir in rice and cover reducing heat for 20 minutes. DO NOT OPEN THE LID until 20 minutes later and the rice will be good to go.
Once your pork is cooked remove from oven, uncover and let rest. This is a perfect time to put the tortillas in the oven in some foil at 250 degrees to warm them up. To serve the pork I just sliced about as much as I thought we would eat (I say sliced but it pretty much falls apart).
When the plates are ready to serve I readied the other items for tacos – sour cream, cilantro, salsa and let people serve it up!
EAT MORE PORK!
