Red Curry Coconut Pulled Pork

Coconut Curry Pulled Pork

Spring is in the air and flavorful, fruity recipes are on my mind! This time of year is always pretty busy for me, but spring of 2016 is proving to be especially crazy, mostly because I’m officially six months away from my wedding (yes, shockingly someone has stepped up to the plate to spend the rest of their life with me, who knew).

So I’m knee-deep in all sorts of wedding planning and bridal budgeting, while trying to juggle a day job, all my blogging projects, and SXSW, which completely takes over the city of Austin in both good ways (parties, events, and bands galore!) and bad ways (traffic, omg the traffic).

Basically, this leaves me with zero time to cook. The good news is, I have a slow cooker. And with a slow cooker, you cannot fail. Throw some ingredients in there, set it, forget it, come home from your job or event or meeting and you have a piping-hot meal waiting for you to devour. In this case, that meal is a mouth-watering, sumptuous pulled pork that you will be oh so happy to say aloha to after a long day.

Red Curry Coconut Pulled Pork

Of course, the ingredients you throw into that miracle slow cooker need to be good. And this recipe here is full of good stuff. We’re starting with a boneless netted fresh pork shoulder roast from Smithfield. This pork is the star of the show and it couldn’t be easier to prep. Literally go buy it at the store, take it home, cut it out of its net, and drop it in the crockpot. Done. No trimming, no chopping, no nothing. Love it!

Then you need some flavor to make your pork great. This is where the aforementioned fruit comes in. The pork shoulder is drenched in crushed pineapple and pineapple juice, plus a bunch of bright, island-y flair: ginger, soy, agave, sriracha, and curry paste come together to make a sweet-spicy-tangy sauce that is so perfect with this juicy, tender pulled pork. Oh, and you’re adding in some coconut milk at the very end for a little bit of creamy sweetness that takes this tropical pulled pork to the next level.

Even if springtime means “no time,” I promise this meal will come together in a snap and everyone will love it. Make sure to have plenty of sweet Hawaiian rolls and white rice on hand for serving!

Red Curry Coconut Pulled Pork

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100 Ways to Use Beer in Food and Drinks #17: Brown Shugga’ Pulled Pork

brown shuga pulled pork

Every once in a while, the fiance’s schedule and my schedule line up so that we can have dinner together. Sometimes I make dinner (salads, stir fry, and fried rice), and most of the time she makes dinner. Last night, she made dinner — pulled pork. Thanks to my trusty beer exchange, there are a few unique beers I will hide away to have with a particular meal, or IN a particular meal. She asked me the night before to suggest a beer to cook our BBQ pulled pork in. In digging through my arsenal of craft beers, I came upon the Lagunitas Brown Shugga’ Sweet Release. BINGO – what else could complement a sweet BBQ pulled pork like a beer with a tasting profile including brown sugar, sweet fruits, and a warming boozy taste to pair with the tang of BBQ sauce. A match made in pork  and beer heaven.

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Apple Bourbon Pulled Pork Stuffing

stuffing

If you ask me, it is NOT a holiday meal without stuffing. Nothing says celebration like cooking some old bread up with an unreasonable amount of butter and fatty meat. Honestly, I don’t even care if we have a bird. Whether it’s turkey, goose or even ham on the Christmas table, I’m expecting stuffing on the side.

And this year I’m pretty proud of my new invention: stovetop stuffing amped up with apple bourbon slow-cooker pulled pork, walnuts and apples. YEP.

Apple Bourbon Pulled Pork Stuffing

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Cooking with Jager: BBQ Pulled Pork Sliders

01_Pulled Pork Sliders_0327

Alright, summer is now officially on and it’s one week til Independence Day which, let’s face it, means you’re not getting an ounce of work down over the next two weeks. Yep, the next 10 days are officially reserved for browsing pinterest at your desk, “working” while actually surfing sites like www.weluvbingo.com, and of course, deciding what you’re going to grill for the 4th. May we present our first suggestion: a pulled pork slider recipe that proves  Jägermeister is good for something other than getting the party started.

Jägermeister BBQ’d Pulled Pork Sliders with Jicama-Avocado Slaw

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Super Snacks: Banh Mi Waffle Fry Nachos

Banh Mi Waffle Fry Nachos

So, there’s like some sort of sporting event coming up soon.  I did some Googling and it turns out it is called the “Super Bowl.”  Huh.  Sounds like an excuse to make some fancy nachos to me.

I’m kidding. I know what the Super Bowl is.  And I know that nachos must be present.  Sometimes sandwiches are invited to the party, as well. These nachos are a reinterpretation of a banh mi, which is a Vietnamese sandwich of grilled meats and pickled vegetables.  But, since I have no bread in the house besides 45-calorie sliced bread (Thanks a lot, Sarah Lee, nobody does it like you, you know) and my pantry looks like a mystery basket from Chopped, I decided to do this thing.  I pickled vegetables.  That’s a phrase I’ve never uttered.  I also used my crockpot to make an Asian marinated pork loin.  Surely these things belong on waffle fries, sprinkled with cheese.

Yes, it was meant to be.

Banh Mi Nachos

Banh Mi Waffle Fry Nachos

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Bacon Lattice Pulled Pork Potato Pie

bacon pie

Advance apologies to anyone who has made any kind of New Year’s resolution, because this almost certainly breaks all of them. But it simply has to be shared. Attention must be paid.

My girlfriend recently proposed making Cowgirl’s Country Life’s bacon-topped pulled pork pie and I, well, just about proposed to her…Check out the link for the full recipe, but here’s the play-by-play:

1. Potatoes

potatoes

Sliced thinly and spread across a cast iron; topped with some mysteriously awesome pork spices we picked up in Denmark this summer

2. Pork

pork

This is a great way to use up the leftovers from slow cooker pulled pork. We also added some extra BBQ sauce.

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Gridiron Grub: Southern Seven-Layer Dip

The beginning of fall is always bittersweet for me, because I love summer with all my heart. The silver lining to this new season, though, is that fall equals the return of football, which equals daydrinking, snacking, and of course, tailgating!

I love tailgating. Lounging outside in the sun, downing beer, and chowing down on indulgent snacks? Hell yeah. Now that I’m a Texas transplant, I have fully committed to the southern tailgate lifestyle, and I am here to tell you it is way more intense than anything I experienced in Washington. Here in Austin, a city with no pro sports teams, college football reigns supreme. It doesn’t matter if you attended UT or not, on game days you proudly sport all the burnt orange you can muster and hook ’em horns with the best of ’em. My boyfriend, Rob, is a born-and-raised Austinite and a huuuuge Longhorns supporter with a reserved tailgate spot and season tickets to all the games, so I knew it was important to make a strong “I’m committed to this, y’all!” statement among the other fans at my first UT tailgate.

Mulling over all the traditional choices got a bit tedious. Chips, queso, pulled pork, chili, salsa… I couldn’t make up my mind and didn’t want to just settle for one of those cliché (albeit delicious, don’t get me wrong!) choices. Suddenly it dawned one me: why not combine all my favorite fatty football foods in one epic dish?! If people can do that with Mexican food, why couldn’t I do that with Southern food?! And thus, the Southern Seven-Layer Dip was born.

Southern Seven-Layer Dip

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