When you’re working on a budget, you grab the deals. So yes, when you have the chance to snag an entire pork loin for relatively little cash, you grab that deal, you chop it up into meal sized roasts and you go with it. One thing I’ve noticed when you’re working with a particular cut of meat is getting into a rut with how you prepare it. For me (and I’m shaking my head as I write this) the ‘old standby’ is a bbq pulled pork (I’m shaking my head as I presently have one in the crockpot…). Sometimes you just need to shake it up, and with a little help from Google and some more seasoned bloggers, sometimes you stumble upon something quite amazing. I give you…
Now the usual words of warning I’ll give when doing anything in a slow cooker.
- Make sure you have plenty of time…it’s called a slow cooker for a reason.
- Try to make sure your meat has been thoroughly thawed overnight if you’re working from a recipe and checking out their cook times.
# 2 is where I ran into an issue on this one. I didn’t take the roast out and let it thaw overnight, so I went straight into the slow-cooker and had to crank it up to high to finish in time for dinner. Bad move. I have a little chart that shows pork roasts should hit at least 145 degrees F to be considered done. I went WELL beyond that. Still edible, but almost to the point of crunchy. What can I say? Rookie move. But that’s why we eat every day, right? Plenty of chances to learn, adjust and excel on the next attempt.
That’s the roast. I had about a 1.5 lb cut…I would trim back the amount of rub as there was PLENTY left that really just went to waste. Now for the star of the show. There’s a pizza place in Regina that has the marketing slogan “The Sauce Is Boss”, and that is definitely an adage that is in play with this meal. It works, it is the spotlight and dang is it tasty. I’m not just saying that as I completely over-cooked the roast and the sauce was the only thing that turned out, this glaze just ‘works’ and it is quite easy to do. A notable change I made to the linked recipe? I found that my glaze was just a bit too runny and the cornstarch wasn’t really having an impact on thickening things up while it was on the burner. I added some more and it sorted itself out. One quick reminder on that – NEVER add cornstarch directly to a sauce without first making it into a paste with a very small splash of water. Straight cornstarch just turns into little clumps you’ll wind up straining out before using (unless you’re a fan of some little flavour powder shots in your meals – just like Grandma used to make!). A little water, a little whisk and you’re good to go. And when you DO start adding some cornstarch to thicken, do it a little bit at a time. You can very quickly go from a rather runny sauce, to straight up pudding.
I followed the glaze recipe verbatim with the exception of substituting white vinegar for rice vinegar (it’s what I had on hand) and using powdered ginger rather than fresh (again, I had it on hand).
This one is going in the rotation. And the slow-cooker a little earlier next time so I can roast it on “low”.
-g
Dad's Turn To Cook 