Slow-cooked Pork Shoulder with Tomato Marmalade

This dish comes from Top Chef season 2, and I found it in one of the Top Chef cookbooks - books I like to read, but rarely cook from. However, this was an excellent dish, and I'm glad I tried it. I pretty much followed the recipe but decided to use my crock-pot to make things even easier. It was one of the dishes I served as part of our 13-course menu, so having it all cooked in advance sure helped. I used less liquid than the original recipe, since very little evaporates from the crock pot.

We just served small servings of this, both pork and tomato marmalade, on toast. I have a lot of leftovers in the freezer, and I'm thinking we'll probably serve those with nacho chips and lots of toppings. (Lots of meat, that is - we ate every last bit of the tomato marmalade.)

The tomato marmalade is very zingy and I used a bit more capers than the original recipe called for. It really cuts through the richness of the meat.

Slow-cooked Pork Shoulder
1,5 kilos (or so) pork shoulder (I use fläskkarré)
salt, and pepper
3 tbsp olive oil
1 carrot, finely diced
2 celery sticks, finely sliced
1 onion, diced
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 tbsp Chinese five-spice powder
125 ml freshly-squeezed orange juice
250 ml red wine vinegar
125 ml beef stock

Heat the oil in a heavy pot. Season the pork with salt and pepper, and brown it well on all sides.

Lift out the pork and move it to the crock-pot. In the other pot, add the vegetables and the five-spice. Cook on low-medium heat for about 5-10 minutes. The vegetables should have softened. Put the veggies in the crock-pot.

Stir together vinegar, orange juice and beef stock and pour on top of the meat. Cook on low until the meat is really tender - I let mine go for about 8 hours.

Lift out the meat and shred it, using two forks. Place in a heavy pot. Sieve the remains in the crock-pot and discard the solids. Add the juices to the meat. Before serving, re-heat on the stove, and season with salt and pepper.

Tomato Marmalade
300 g cherry tomatoes
125 ml sugar
125 ml sherry vinegar
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 tbsp fresh basil, chopped
1 scallion, thinly sliced (this is salladslök in Swedish, feel free to use leeks instead)
1 tbsp capers, drained
1 tsp red pepper flakes

Cook the sugar and tomatoes on medium heat until the sugar is dissolved - this needs to be watched and stirred. Add everything else, and cook on fairly high heat for about 20 minutes. The marmalade should be syrupy and thick, but it will thicken even more if you let it sit before serving, so try to remember that.  Season with salt and pepper if you wish, and serve it with the meat.

Crock-Pot Minestrone Soup

It's cold outside. No wonder, perhaps, as I live in Sweden, but we've actually had a very mild winter this year. This week however, we're going through some sort of cold snap, and it's very chilly. Perfect soup weather, though. And always, perfect crock-pot weather. I really do like this "gadget", allowin me to cook while being at work. It's very handy. And the results are very tasty.

Crock-Pot Minestrone Soup

450 g minced beef
1 yellow onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
2-3 carrots, diced
400 g tinned cherry tomatoes
1-2 tsp dried oregano
1 litre beef stock
200 g dried pasta (I use elbow macaroni)
salt, pepper

Brown the meat, onion and garlic, before adding to your crock-pot. Drain any extra fat.

Add carrots, tomatoes, oregano and beef stock, put your crock-pot on "low" and let it cook for 8 hours or so.

About half an hour before serving, add the macaroni. Put the crock-pot on "high" for the remaining half hour, or until the pasta is cooked through.

Season with salt and pepper, and serve with grated parmesan.

Recipe in Swedish:
Minestrone i crock-pot

Crock-Pot Apple Butter

Apple butter is like a very reduced apple sauce and brown and thick. It's nice on oatmeal, but also with ice cream, pancakes or as a filling for various baked goods. I made mine in the crock-pot which was very convenient! You can do it on the stove, but you'll have to watch it to make sure it doesn't burn.

I know it's a huge portion in the photo, but I was scraping out the remains after filling a few jars, and it's so delicious I couldn't stand to throw any of it away.

Start this in the afternoon, and then you can add the sugar and spices overnight.

Crock-Pot Apple Butter

1500 g peeled and cored apples, cut into smaller pieces

Put the apples in your crock-pot. Cover with a lid and place on low heat for four hours. Stir, and mash up the apples.

Then add:
200 ml white sugar
200 ml brown sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cloves
1-2 vanilla beans (mine were dry so I added two - if they'd been softer, I'd have scraped one out and stirred in the seeds.)

Cover with the lid, and cook on low heat for eight hours.

And that's it! Pour into jars and keep cool - or freeze, which is what I do.

Recipe in Swedish:
Långkokat äppelmos i Crock-Pot

Pulled Pork Sandwiches

I've made pulled pork before, and I've even made it in the crock-pot, but oh, I had never made this before...

It was so simple. I took some large pieces of pork shoulder, tossed them in the crock-pot and poured on some Coca-Cola. I switched the crock-pot on low, and let it cook for about eight hours. I shredded the meat, and seasoned it with a lot of barbecue sauce.

I buttered and fried some hamburger buns.

I made this Cilantro Jalapeño Coleslaw.

And assembled. It was truly heaven.

Ratatouille Chicken in Crock-Pot

Still really loving the slowcooker! I need to try much more with it, but I haven't had that much time to plan or cook lately. I hope to get a lot done this summer though - it'll be nice to have some time off.

This was the first, but certainly not last, time cooking chicken. I decided I want something simple to go along with it, and settled on a kind-of-ratatouille. It turned out a little watery for my taste, but still very good. The chicken was awesome - very moist and flavorful.

Ratatouille Chicken in Crock-Pot
serves 4

1 1/2 yellow onion, coarsely chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 zucchini, diced
100 ml (a little less than 1/2 cup) fennel, finely sliced
1 red bellpepper, diced
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp salt
1 can (400 g) tomato "fillets", or regular crushed (or even whole) tomatoes
2 tbsp chunky salsa sauce
1 whole, fresh chicken
salt, lemon pepper

Prepare all the veggies, and mix with the salsa, the tinned tomatoes, and some salt and cumin in the crock-pot.

To prepare the chicken, remove as much skin as possible. (It won't be great slow-cooked.) Season with salt and lemon pepper. Place the chicken, breast down, on top of the veggies. Cover with the lid, and cook on high for four hours.

Serve with some sort of grain - we had bulgur wheat, which was great.

Recipe in Swedish:
Ratatouillekyckling i crock-pot

Crock-Pot Carnitas

I finally tried the crock-pot for the first time today! And what better to try than... carnitas! Or at least, slow-cooked pork. I call it carnitas because that's how we ate it - we fried it in a skillet after the liquid was absorbed, and ate it with tortillas, red onions, and cilantro. (And I admit, a dollop of créme fraîche on mine.) I didn't season the pork a whole lot in the pot, thinking I'd season it more at the final stage instead, and that's what I ended up doing. I have most of it stashed in the freezer, and will definitely use up some for tacos, and some for pulled pork sandwiches with lots of barbecue sauce.

Because, let me tell you, this was so good. So, so good. Amazing really. My regular carnitas are good, too, but this was so much more tender. It truly fell apart at the touch of a spoon. I could hardly believe it. In fact, for the first hour or so, I was really sceptical. Nothing at all happened, so I put my slow cooker on high for half an hour or so, until I could at least feel it getting a little warm, and then back to low for about eight hours.


Titus adored this, too.

So, a recipe? Hardly need it. Here's what I did. I took a big piece of pork - about two kilos of shoulder - and seasoned it with salt, cumin and ancho chili. Placed it in the slowcooked, and added the juice of one lime and one orange. I also added about 100 ml of water, which in retrospect probably wasn't necessary at all.

And that was that. I can't believe it's this easy to cook this good. It took five minutes of prepping time, and then five more minutes before serving. Anyone, anyone can do this.