Ranchero Shredded Pork

Today is Sunday and it was a cold and blustery day, so I thought an easy spicy comfort meal was in order.  Let’s see, crock pots are easy, so I’ll do that. Spicy and comfort just go together for me, lucky it works for my husband and son too! So, they take a little Zantac every once in awhile…

I like to buy those small pork roasts at Costco. They come in three packs and are sealed in great packaging that is easy to freeze.  When I buy a 3 pack, I use one right away and stash the other two in the freezer for later on.  Each roast is about 2 lbs each, which is a great size for a family dinner, or if, you are a small family, great way to have leftovers.  I’ll give you more ideas on the leftovers below!

I’ve been making this dish for a year or so, and I really can’t remember the original inspiration. I like the recipe so much for the Ranchero sauce as much as I do the shredded pork.  I’ll also give you some ideas on how to use the extra sauce below.

Ingredients:

1 2lb pork shoulder roast (approx… bigger works too!)

1 28 oz. can of Rotel diced tomatoes with peppers (regular diced tomatoes work too!)

1 ½ cup of water

½ or 1 whole medium Anaheim chili, minced

½ or 1 whole medium jalapeno, minced

1 medium onion, diced

1 Tbsp chili powder

1 Tbsp. cumin

1 Tbsp. smoked paprika

…I know I pictured limes in the ingredient photo, but I decided the Rotel tomatoes were pretty tangy, so I didn’t use them.

Remove the pork from the wrapper, and rinse it before putting in your crock pot.  I know many people and recipes swear you ought to brown the meat before you cook it in the crock pot, but I’m into EASY, so I’ve been skipping this part for awhile.  Hey, if you want to brown it, knock yourself out, I bet it will be great, but I know you’ll be washing more pans than I did.

Add the tomatoes and water on top of the pork and add all the rest of the ingredients!  See? I told you this was going to be easy!  I’ve shown my ingredients sitting artfully on top of the pork roast, but of course, you do need to give them a little stir before you put the lid on and start the cooking process.

***If you are not into super spicy, you might want to reduce the amount of chilies that you use.  I chickened out and only add ½ a jalapeno and ½ the Anaheim pepper as I was worried the Rotel tomatoes were too spicy.

I cooked this roast about 4 ½ hours, and limited the amount of times that I peeked inside by removing the lid.  I read somewhere that every time you remove the lid from your crock pot that you extend the cooking time by 15 minutes due to the change in temperature.  Yep, it scared me enough to get anxious every time I really do need to take the lid off.

After 4 hours, I removed the pork roast from the crock pot and placed on a small baking sheet.  Bake the pork roast at 350 degrees for about 15 minutes.  This dries the roast out a bit, which is a good thing after simmering in the liquid all day.  You don’t have to do this step, I’ve skipped it before, but I’ve noticed that the pork is a bit more watery and a bit too “shreddy”.

While the pork is in the oven, add the liquid from the crock pot into your blender.   Blend until smooth.

***Remember, it can be kind of dangerous to blend hot mixtures as they tend to expand and fly out the top!  Cover your blender top with a kitchen towel and hold on before blending. 

Add the contents of the blender into a saucepan and reduce on medium heat for about 10 minutes.  Mine usually reduces by about 25%.  Add salt and pepper after the sauce has reduced… you might even find that you don't need much at all! 

Take the pork out of the oven and using 2 forks, shred it into nice chunks that work for your dinner and top with the Ranchero sauce.

Main Dish and Side Dish Inspirations

This meal has SO MANY options of how you could really eat it, that I am going to give you a list of some ideas of what you can do:

• Ranchero pork burritos (pictured!).  Flour tortilla, shredded cheese, a little leftover rice, shredded pork, sauce, roll it all up and top with more Ranchero sauce and more cheese.  Serve with Mexican coleslaw with lime.

• Pork tacos… yep, just use it in place of your normal ground beef.
• Shredded meat topped with sauce and served with rice and refried beans.
• Ranchero Pork Enchiladas
• Ranchero shredded pork sandwich on a hoagie roll… top with some of the crunchy tangy coleslaw.

Round Two cooking… make more and use it for:

• See above…

What else would this technique work on???

You could easily use this technique on:

• Beef, Turkey breast or chicken

One #1 favorite thing to do with the leftover Ranchero sauce… IS… drum roll please… Huevos Ranchero!  Tomorrow’s my birthday and I intend to make myself a little Huevos Ranchero for breakfast.  I will tell you how tomorrow!

Spicy Shrimp Curry

I love spicy flavor intense foods, and when I’m trying to eat more healthy (aka dieting!) I find I need even more than usual!  So I found a curry recipe online that looked promising… except it was waaayyy too complicated.  I really hate recipes that you actually have to run to the store and clear your whole schedule to complete. So, I set to simplifying the recipe to something that was easy to make and tasted good.  I was surprised and pleased at how fast this came together, and how easy it was to make. I liked it better than the curries that I order at Thai or Indian restaurants.  It IS spicy, so if you are not a fan, cut back, or remove some of the spicier elements like the cayenne pepper and the jalapeno.

I like to keep frozen shrimp/prawns in the freezer… it’s a great last minute thing to cook for dinner, and it’s an almost instant appetizer when people are coming over.  You can thaw frozen prawns in about 20 minutes by running a very thin stream of running water into a bowl, in the sink.  I’m going to be posting another 3 or 4 favorites prawn recipes in the coming weeks.

Here's what you need:

1 lb of frozen, raw shrimp/prawns, thawed and tails removed. Choose the kind that is pre-shelled and already de-veined

Juice of one lime

1-2 Tbsp canola oil

1 small onion, thin slices

1 large jalapeno, minced

1 2" piece of fresh ginger, peeled and grated

2 tsp minced garlic

1 tsp turmeric

1 tsp curry powder

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper, optional

1 15oz. can ‘light’ coconut milk

1 15oz. can diced tomatoes

Veggies!  Here are some suggestions

            Pea pods and carrots (I used grated carrots in my version)

            Bell peppers and Mushrooms

            Zucchini and celery

1 cup chopped cilantro, about one handful

Salt and pepper

Thaw the shrimp and pull off the tails… believe me, you’ll be happy you did when you’re eating this that you don’t need to stop and take each one off as you eat.   Oh yeah, guess who thought she’d save some time and not do that?... In the process, I also managed to stain my new white cloth napkin with the yellow fingerprints of turmeric and curry powder, which is super hard to remove BTW! 

Squeeze the lime into the prawns and add a little salt and pepper.  Let this mixture sit while you complete the next steps.

Add the oil to a large saucepan on medium heat, sauté the jalapeno and the onion for a minute or two. 

Add the ginger, garlic and the turmeric, curry powder and cayenne and stir until it’s very fragrant.  Add the can of light coconut milk and the can of diced tomatoes, including the juice. 

Let simmer for about 5 minutes and then add the cilantro, veggies and the shrimp.  I like my veggies quite crunchy, if you do not, put in the veggies first and cook a couple of minutes before you add the shrimp.  The shrimp/prawns cook SO quickly, and they tend to get hard if you cook them too long. I added the pea pods at the very last minute, since they cook so quickly, but I neglected to get a photo of that!

Serve over rice... I used brown rice, but basmati rice would be more traditional. 

Side Dish Inspirations

This a main course kind of meal, but here are some ideas to serve with the curry:

• Green Salad
• Marinated veggies, like cooling cucumbers to beat the heat.
• Nan bread

Round Two cooking… make more and use it for:

If you plan it right, you could make some extras  for another meal. 

Here's some ideas:

• Make a double batch, and before you add the veggies and the shrimp, take half the sauce out and freeze it. That way, you can easily add meat and veggies for a quick dinner.  Even frozen, this sauce would be easy to defrost in the microwave if you forget to take something out before work.
• Lunches…. Hmmm, I ate last night’s dinner for lunch today and it was a nice warm healthy choice!

What else would this technique work on???

You could easily use this technique on:

• Do a Vegetarian curry by adding a variety of veggies and serve over brown rice.
• Chicken, Scallops, shredded beef or pork instead of the shrimp.