Spicy Carnitas Soup

So you make a porketta roast for dinner.  Porketta reminds me of my childhood.  It's an EASY crockpot dinner, throw in a crockpot on low for 6-8 hours (3 lb roast) with 1/2 C of water, it's done when a fork inserted easily breaks the meat apart. 

Sliced up or shredded and eaten on a yummy hard roll.  Accept that your children eat about 2 bites and decide it's too spicy.  What do you do after being irritated?

I make soup and call it what it reminds me of...carnitas, since a lot of people haven't heard of porketta.  The chopping helps with the irritation too;)  The result...YUMMY. 

Here's what you'll need or rather what I had in the house and used to make this soup:

2 lbs shredded, cooked Porketta ~ If you have the juice from making the roast add that too
6 C Beef Broth
6 C Chicken Broth
2 Carrots diced
3 cloves Garlic minced
1 small Onion minced
1 can Diced Tomatoes with green Chilis
1 can Pinto Beans rinsed ~ or Black Beans rinsed
2 Potatoes diced ~ or 1 C Minute Rice (I chose potato this time around)
1 C frozen Corn
Handful of fresh Cilantro chopped

Heat pork, broth, carrots, garlic, onion and tomatoes until boiling.  Boil for 10 minutes or until carrots are soft.  Add beans, corn and pototoes or rice.  Cook until potato or rice is soft (about 6-10 minutes)  Turn off heat, add chopped cilantro.  Season with salt and pepper to taste and serve.

 

Pork and Rice

I was trying to come up with a catchy name for this dish but it's early and my creativity is apparently on summer vacation so Pork and Rice it is.  But it's not just any rice, sing it with me, "it's Riccccccccce-a-Roniiiiiiiiii, a San Francisco treat!!"  Did I just totally date myself?!?  I remember that commercial vividly but haven't had actual Rice-a-Roni since I was a kid.  We had it often enough as a side dish and I liked it but it never made it into my home until last week.

Alanna and I were talking about when we were kids and different things we liked.  She told me her favorite meal that her Grandma made was Rice-a-Roni with a can of stewed tomatoes that had pork chops on top.  Flash forward a couple of months and I was standing in Aldi and there was the generic version of Rice-a-Roni.  I had thin cut pork chops defrosting in the fridge.  Hmmmmm, would my kids eat it??  Was it actually good or was Alanna's memory skewed?  The rice was .89 cents, I figured I could give it a try.  Worse case scenario, I could scrape the rice from the chops and they'd eat that.  So, I threw caution to the wind and grabbed the rice.

What you'll need:
1 Box Rice-a-Roni
Package of thin cut, boneless pork chops
Salt, Pepper, Garlic Powder
Water

How's that for a nice small list?? 

You're going to brown the chops.  Pan fry the pork chops that you've seasoned with salt, pepper and garlic powder.  What that means is, put them in the pan with the heat at about a 6, cook on each side about 3-4 minutes until they are browned.  Pour about 1/4 cup of water in the pan to get all the yummy on the bottom.  Turn off the heat.

In another pan, prepare rice according to box.  When it's time to add the water minus 1/4 C of water because you used that with the pork chops AND you are pouring the pork chops and water into the pan with the rice at the same time. 

Alanna's Grandma apparently threw in a can of stewed tomatoes at this time too but I wasn't feeling sassy so I skipped it. 

Cover, turn heat to low and simmer for 15 minutes.  Make your favorite vegetable for the side while cooking.  Dinner is served!!  Quick, easy and yummy.

You're pan frying these without any butter or olive oil.  Simply use a non stick pan and save yourself the calories.

 When the pork chops are browned on both sides, pour 1/4 C of water in pan to get all the yummy from the bottom of the pan.

 Pour the pork chops into the rice with water.  Cover and this is what you'll find in 15 minutes.  Super moist pork chops on flavorful rice that took you less than 30 minutes!!

 

Country Fried Pork

What do you make for dinner when you took boneless pork chops out and you have about 15 minutes to cook?  Country Fried Pork! 

 

Put your pork chops between plastic wrap and using your meat mallet, gently start pounding in the middle, working your way out to the sides so that it's even.

 

Sprinkle with salt, pepper and garlic powder and dredge through some flour.  Shake off excess.

Heat about a 1/4 C of Olive Oil in a pan and when it's hot (few minutes) drop in your floured pork.  Cook each side for about 3-4 minutes.

Serve with your favorite sides. 

Easy and quick, that's my kind of dinner!

Scotch Egg

You all know how much I love the state fair. Every year we try at least one new thing. Fifteen years ago that thing was the scotch egg. It was Craig's pick and he LOVED it. Sausage rolled around a hard boiled egg, deep fried. Had his name written ALL over it. You also have the option of sauces to dunk, Craig picked maple syrup.

For those of you who don't know me well, I am a "can I have just a bite girl" AND I truly mean it. Craig would give me a bite of his egg every year and that was plenty for me. Max has developed a liking for them much like his Dad. It has become a yearly tradition for him and now Max.

Since I had the ingredients, I gave it a whirl.

Max said that they were PERFECT.

What you'll need:

1 lb of Pork Sausage
3 hard boiled Eggs
3/4 C Bread Crumbs
Crisco for frying
Maple Syrup for dunking

Pat out a patty of Pork...say that 5 times fast;)

Put your egg in the middle

Wrap the egg with the sausage, essentially making a big meatball.

Wild Rice Hot Dish

Yep, I called it a hot dish because that's what we call it in Minnesota. In his meat eating days, Dylan had this at a potluck and LOVED it. I just came across the recipe so I thought I'd give it a go. It's really rich but has a great flavor. I'll be entering this in the wild rice competition at pow wow this summer.

What you'll need:

1 C "uncooked" Wild Rice = 3 C cooked
3 Chicken Bouillon Cubes
1 C Red Pepper diced
1 C Celery chopped
1/2 C Onion minced
8 oz sliced Fresh Mushrooms
1 Can Cream of Chicken soup~I used reduced fat
1/2 C Chicken Broth
1 lb Jimmy Dean Sausage ~ I used a generic pork sausage
1/2 lb Bacon diced
1 t Poultry Seasoning

Cook rice according to package directions but instead of using plain water, throw in a few Chicken Bouillon cubes. It makes the rice taste much better in my opinion. In all honesty you could probably make this with brown rice but the wild rice gives it that extra something of yummy!

Fry the sausage and remove from the pan. Add chopped bacon (I cut mine with my kitchen shears) to the pan and fry. And, no you can't cook it together because the bacon gets lost and doesn't cook right. Yes, I tried it and it was messy fixing my "time saving" trick.

When bacon's getting close to done, throw in the pepper, celery, mushrooms and onion together and cook until softened.

Mix everything together (from top of the recipe ingredients to the bottom). Put in a oven safe pot and bake for 30 minutes at 350. Enjoy!

Fry your sausage (don't look at the bacon. That needs to cook by itself). I added a little fresh cracked pepper just because I was feeling sassy;)

Adding in the vegetables

Add the mushrooms

Yummy

ASIAN PORK WRAPS

I was going through my crock pot recipes and I came across and oldie but a goodie. I don't have any photos, but I think this is pretty straight forward and tis the season for crock pot recipes with hockey season being in full swing.

Pork Roast - 4 lbs cut in half
1/3 C Hoisen Sauce
1/4 C Stir Fry Sauce
1/2 t Garlic
1 t sesame oil

Mix all the ingredients except roast in crock pot. Put your roast in the pot and coat with sauce. Cook on low 8-10 hours. Serve wrapped in tortillas with a little coleslaw straight out of the bag. My kids preferred it without the slaw but I liked the crunch.

Pulled Pork & Slaw

I'm always looking for easy crock pot recipes that can cook for at least 8 hours. Those recipes that you cook for 4, what exactly is the point of that?? Or the ones that you basically cook everything before you put it in the crock pot? At any rate, I went looking around and I found this recipe on TastyKitchen.com. It was super easy and very tasty. 5 of 6 guests approved and yes, it was my son who didn't like it this time;)

For the Pork
1/2 C Ketchup
1/3 C Cider Vinegar
1/3 C Brown Sugar
6 oz Tomato Paste
2 T Worchestshire Sauce
2 T Yellow Mustard
1 1/2 t Salt
1 t Onion Powder

Whisk all this up in the crock pot. Cut a 3 lb Pork Sirloin roast into 3 chunks, turn the pieces to coat. Cook on low for about 8 hours and it just falls apart when you touch it with a fork.

For the Slaw

1/2 C Mayo
3 T Canola Oil
1/4 C Sugar
1 T Cider Vinegar
1/4 t Salt
1/2 t Celery Seed
1 t Onion Powder

Mix together and toss in a 14 oz bag of Coleslaw. Cover and let chill for at least 2 hours.

Cut your buns, throw some pork on and top with coleslaw. Tastes like a little bit of summer:)

Both recipes pretty much don't need the play by play but I did take photos of the coleslaw and the finished dinner.

Mix up the dressing
Toss your coleslaw in
Dinner is served

Baked Ribs

Finally, the infamous ribs that made my children eat cereal for a week for dinner because they wouldn't eat them. Both said they tasted good, they just weren't in the "mood" for ribs. I thought of making them on day 8 after their week of cold cereal to see if they were in the "mood" yet but I decided not to go there.

The good news is, I like them and so do the people at work that I feed my leftovers to.

What you'll need
Package of ribs ~ sorry folks, I have no idea how many pounds this was, I want to say 3?!
Spike Seasoning
Accent
Season Salt
Black Pepper
8 Garlic Cloves minced
wanna get crazy, add a few minced jalapenos to the garlic, seeds removed.

Spray a cake pan with cooking spray and then line with aluminum foil. Enough foil to fold up and over these ribs. We're trying to make an airtight seal but if we don't accomplish that, it's all good. Just do your best.

Take your ribs out of the packaging. Meaty side down, sprinkle 1-2 teaspoons of each season and rub 1/2 of the garlic mix on...use rubber gloves if you are working with jalapenos.

Flip them over and repeat the process. Wrap tightly with foil and put back in the fridge for at least 24 hours. Turn oven to 250 and put the ribs in. Cook for 4 hours at this low heat. Take the ribs out and put them on a cookie sheet, brush with your favorite BBQ sauce and throw under the broiler for a couple of minutes and serve.

Here are your ribs ready to start

Put them on your foil and start the seasoning...don't forget to spray your pan or use a throw away one

Fold in the sides

Seal them up as tight as you can and put in the fridge for at least 24 hours Bake them at 250 for 4 hours or until they are so tender they are almost falling off the bone.

You can be done now if you want or

Brush with your favorite BBQ sauce, put under the broiler for a few minutes and serve. Notice I left a chunk plain for my son...who ate bread;)

Crockpot Pork Chop

What do you need when you have a LONG week ahead and a bunch of snow to shovel? What do you do when your son doesn't eat stuff that's mixed together and you don't feel like fighting with him? Crockpot Pork Chops. They are so moist that they fall apart. AND, you look like a super star to your kids because you made them something they like during a busy week.

You'll need
4 Thick Cut Pork Chops ~ mine were partially frozen
1 Can Cream of Soup ~ I used Cream of Mushroom 98% fat free
1/2 Can Water
2 t Favorite Seasoning ~ I used my favorite Greek one but garlic powder, salt and pepper work just fine

Put pork chops in the crockpot, season, dump soup, pour water around edges. Cover and crock for 6-8 hours on low.

Here's your ingredients.

My doesn't that look appetizing..NOT! But, I promise the end result is yummy.
Pour the juices into a small pan and bring to a boil with a teaspoon of Kitchen Bouquet to darken the gravy. Mix together a couple T of cornstarch or flour and 1 T of COLD water. Whisk with a fork to get lumps out. It should be a thick milk consistency. Whisk into boiling juices and TA DA...you just made gravy. I serve the gravy over cooked egg noodles. It's also good over rice but my children haven't evolved to like rice yet;)

Dinner is served.