Slow Roast Pork with Apples & Peppers

To round off my two weeks of 40th Birthday celebrations I had my lovely sister in law (who made me a birthday cake!) and her fabulous family around for Sunday lunch.  I advised them beforehand that they would be guinea pigs for the latest slow roast recipe I had found.  Again from the good food website a James Martin special:

Slow Roast Pork with Apples & Peppers

Serves 8

2.25Kg Pork shoulder joint - scored and tied

50g butter, softened

3 tbsp demerara sugar

3 tbsp wholegrain mustard

For the apples and peppers

3 onions, thinly sliced

2 Braeburn apples, quartered, cored and sliced thinly

6 large bell peppers, red or yellow, quartered with cored and deseeded

Couple of bay leaves

3 tbsp cider vinegar

3 tbsp olive oil

2 tbsp wholegrain mustard

2 tbsp demerara sugar

Heat oven to 146oc/140oc fan/gas 3.  Pop the pork on a sheet of foil, mix the butter, sugar and mustard together with 2 tsp of salt and rub all over the joint, then fold the foil to make a tight parcel and put into a roasting tin.  I realised when putting the ingredients together that a) I did not have demerara sugar so mixed half/half golden granulated and dark muscovado and b) I did not have enough wholegrain mustard, so again a 50/50 split wholegrain and dijon.

Put the onions, apples and peppers into a large shallow roasting tin, toss the bay leaves. Mix the vinegar, oil, mustard (I only had dijon at this point) and sugar (golden granulated and dark muscovado again) with 100ml water and pour all over. 

Roast the pork for 3.5 hours, whilst you cook the peppers on the shelf below for the first two hours.  Remove the peppers dish, cover and leave to cool.  At this point I thought that two hours was slightly too long for the peppers as, the onions were in places blackened and the dish was dry, which is why I covered it with foil to gain a bit of condensation.  Next time I will cook it for slightly less.

After 3 hours remove the foil from the pork, making sure all the lovely juices are caught in the tin, pop back into the oven and increase the temp to 200oc/180oc Fan/gas 6, roast for a further 30 mins.  Remove from oven, cover and rest for 20mins.  Put the peppers back into the oven for 20 mins to finish. (I kept them covered with foil to keep juicy).

Serve thick slices of pork, roast peppers & apples, roast potatoes and a few peas with lashing of the delicious pork juices poured over the top.

The pork was so tasty and extremely tender, the peppers and apples had a sweet, sharp and tangy taste.  The whole dish was an absolute winner.

Carolina Pulled Pork

One of the the New Years Resolutions that I enforced onto Hubby-with-low-tolerance-levels was that he cook once a week and I will do my utmost to not to put my two penneth in whilst he is doing so.  I find it hard to let anyone into 'my' kitchen.  So finding a little recipe from an iPhone app on recipes for the Slow Cooker he set about this delicious dish.

Carolina Pulled Pork

Serves 8

2.6Kg Pork Loin (although we only used a 1.5Kg piece)

2 medium onions, finely sliced

2 tbsp brown sugar

1 tbsp paprika

2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

1 cup (23cl) cider vinegar

2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

1/2 tbsp chili flakes

1/2 tbsp sugar

1/2 tsp mustard powder

1/2 tsp garlic salt (which Hubby substituted 1 chopped clove fresh)

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

In a bowl mix the onions, brown sugar, paprika, S&P.  Coat the loin with the mixture and put into the slow cooker.

Mix the vinegar, Worcs. sauce, chili flakes, sugar, mustard, garlic and cayenne.  Pour a third of this sauce over the loin and refrigerate the rest.

Cook the loin on Low for 8 to 10 hours (as we were using a smaller piece, we put it on for 7-8 hours)

Add a further third of the sauce 30 minutes before the end of cooking, we also put the heat up to medium at this point.

Remove the joint and pull apart with forks and use the rest of the sauce from the fridge to taste as you pile the pork into bread buns.

We drained the onions and spices mixture from the slow cooker and used it as a spicy, pickled topping to the pork.  We also cut the loin into two parts the first part we shredded with forks and ate hot, served with homemade coleslaw and my Pinto Beans.  The remainder kept in the fridge and sliced thinly into sandwiches for a few days afterwards.