Yummy pork action

One of our favorite meals to make is this pork dish for many reasons – its cheap, it makes A LOT and it makes the house smell amazing all day! Its like the pork version of Thanksgiving Day when from the moment you wake up the house smells like turkey.

 

1 pork shoulder about 8lbs (bone in)
2 white onions
2T cumin
2T ancho chile powder
4 cloves of garlic
1T ground pepper
1T chipotle powder

Preheat your oven to 300 degrees. In a blender, combine all of the ingredients except for the pork and blend until its a smooth paste.

Onion paste pre-slathering

WARNING: when you take off the lid of the blender – COVER YOUR FACE or you will feel like someone has maced you. It sucks. A lot.

Take the pork and using a sharp knife score both sides in a cross hatch pattern.

Cross hatching

Smear the paste on both sides of the pork making sure to get lots of the paste inside those little nooks you made.

I wish he applied sunscreen on my back like he applies the onions to the pork...

Place the pork in a roasting pan with the fat side up. Put some water on the bottom of the pan so that it covers only 1/4 of the pork.

Cook the pork for 2 hours, rotate and cook again. Keep doing this process of cooking for 2 hours and rotating until the pork has been cooking for a total of 8 hours. If the water level goes dry add just a little bit of water so that the bottom of the pan never gets dry. Make sure the last hour has the fat side up so that the skin gets crispy. If you let it go too far simply put some foil over the pork to bring it back.

FINALLY

Once the 8 hours are up, let the pork cool until it is able to be handled. You can do whatever you want with it from here whether you want to slice it and make a Cuban sandwich or you can shred it (what we do) using 2 forks and just go to town.

Shredding

This pork makes so much that we get to make it many different ways. The first night is usually a gluttony night were we just sit in the kitchen and eat it straight up. We also will make tacos, we eat it with sunny side up eggs, quesadillas, pulled pork sandwiches the list just goes on and on.

The best park is how cheap this is and just how much you get for the money. The pork usually runs about $14 and the onion is about $1 so a total of $15. This last batch we made made a total of 12 servings which breaks down to $1.25 per serving. Can’t beat that! Its so versatile and can be used so many different ways you don’t really get sick of it and I am a notorious for NEVER eating leftovers.

Nutritionally speaking its not too bad either. 1 serving has about 329 calories, 14g of fat and 26g of protein – keeping in mind this is before you add tortillas or cheese to the mix.

My husband also uses this meal as an excuse to make some of my dad’s famous green sauce that he ripped off! Its easy enough and can be tweeked to fit your liking – I personally don’t do spicy and he makes this to the level of spicy that you can taste it twice if you know what I mean…..

2 cans of tomatillos drained
1-2 jalapenos
2-3 habaneros
1 onion
1 bunch of cilantro
2-3 cloves of garlic

all you need

Blend everything together until its pureed and you can eat it there or you can roast it in a sauce pan to round out the flavors (at least that’s what he tells me)

Roasting