Pork Fail
Beautiful spring day on Saturday and Lori had fixings for tacos, but we needed a base ingredient. Thought about Shrimp (old standby), Beef (too frozen), then thought maybe a pulled pork would be a nice switch. Ideally wanted to fire up the new smokey mountain smoker that had just arrived, but it was 4 o'clock by the time we got home and there just wasn't enough time. Then i remembered a boiled/pulled pork More Please had made for New Years Eve that i LOVED, and thought i'd try that. MP was good enough to post her recipe for me, and i got to work. I'm not good at following recipes, but i thought i had the gist of it.... here's what i did:
- Cut up pork shoulder into 2 inch segments
- Boiled it in 4-ish quarts of water with 6 cloves garlic, half red onion, and a smallish poblano for 2.5 hours
- Removed the pork, and it shredded easily (though it was surprisingly dry... guess all the fat/oil was left in the broth)
So i had shredded pork with not a tremendous amount of flavor. Anticipating this, i thought I'd make a tomatillo dressing. To do this i:
- coated 4 tomatillos, half red onion, poblano, and jalapeno in some oil and roasted for 25 minutes in a 400 degree oven
- then blended in a food processor, and added the juice from one lime, salt, and pepper
I added about a quarter cup of this tomatillo dressing to the pork, and stirred around.
Bummer.
Total disappointment. I think my jalapeno was a dud, but still it was just totally lacking in flavor. I should have added a ton of cilantro. or maybe another lime. Or really, I should have smoked that pork shoulder. and this is where I realize I'm a pork snob. I need fire to enjoy pork. And now i have sooooo much pork leftover. The plan is to make Lori's Mexican Lasagna with it substituted for the beef... that should be good because there's a ton of seasoning to that dish so all will hopefully not be lost.
Oh, and to add insult to injury, i left the broth out for 24 hrs before i remembered to save it. So tossed that down the drain too. Arrrg!
