Saturday, February 2, 2013

When in Doubt, The Answer is Beer.

I'm losing my mind. Seriously. I had the intentions of making a pork recipe in my Crock Pot this week, so I wrote down the ingredients that I (allegedly) didn't have, on a list that I took to the grocery store on Monday. Here's what I wrote down:
- 1 medium onion
- 2 to 3 lb pork shoulder
- ground cumin
- lemon juice

I went to go get everything ready on Wednesday for our dinner that night. I opened the cookbook that I assumed it was in and nope, no recipe. I opened another cookbook. Not there either. After flipping through all my cookbooks and scouring my boards on Pinterest, I came across no recipe that required any of those ingredients together. What in the world?? Did I dream up this recipe? Being that it was 11:00 and I needed to get that cooking, I decided to just go ahead and make a BBQ pulled pork. I opened the fridge and found a bottle of BBQ...that was only about 1/4 full. I didn't even have any ketchup on hand to make homemade BBQ sauce. As I stared blankly into my refrigerator, I spotted a bottle of Trader Joe's Apple Cider (Mike's hot drink of choice when it's cold out). I remembered that I had made some sort of recipe with pork and apple cider awhile back, but I wasn't about to go tearing through all my cookbooks to find that recipe, so I figured I'd just wing it. Not that things could get much worse from here, right?

I poured the cider into a measuring cup and saw that there was exactly 1 cup left. Not enough to cook an entire 2 1/2 pound pork in. Adding water would make it less flavorful, so I opened the fridge and spotted beer. Beer goes great with pork, right? So I figured, what the heck - let's do this. And you know what, it was GOOD!

Slow Cooker Pork with Cider and Beer

- 2 to 3 pound pork shoulder
- 1 medium onion, sliced
- 1 bay leaf
- 8 oz apple cider
- 8 oz beer (I used Miller Lite)
- Salt and pepper
- 1/4 tsp cinnamon (optional)

Layer onion on the bottom of the slow cooker and place pork on top.
Sprinkle with salt, pepper and cinnamon.
Mix beer and cider and pour over pork.
Add bay leaf, cover, and cook on low for 8-9 hours.

Crisis averted.



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