Kelly the Culinarian: Guest Post: Kate's Freezer to Crock Pot Pulled Pork Recipe

Friday, February 8, 2013

Guest Post: Kate's Freezer to Crock Pot Pulled Pork Recipe


Hey readers! My pal Kate is back today with another update on her freezer to crock pot cooking strategy. If you'd like to catch up on how she prepares 40 meals at once, check out the rest of her guest posts.

This was actually the first meal I assembled as part of the “40 Meals” experience. I bought one great big (double size) cut of meat and sliced it in half to get two meals out of the recipe. The hardest part was just rubbing the spices all over the meat and then getting it in the freezer bag. I didn’t want to get the pork juice or the spices on the outside of the bag or into the bag sealing plastic line.

Precooking
What I learned - don’t be afraid to slice the meat into two smaller pieces if needed, since the end goal is to
shred the meat anyway.

I dropped the bag contents (still frozen) in the pot and turned it on low and left it for about four hours and then checked it. (Note: The general rule for freezer meals is to cook on low for six hours or high for three to four hours.)


It was clear that this wasn’t going to be done anytime soon, and I was also concerned there wasn’t enough liquid, so I checked the source recipe. Good thing I did, because this recipe actually calls for almost 10 hours of cooking (most of the time on high), and it also advised not to add any extra liquid. Be sure to plan for that!
I did as it told, and was pleasantly surprised – by dinner the meat was fall-apart shred-able, and there was enough liquid to use for dipping the freshly made (Pillsbury) bread I’d made. We like barbecue sauce, so used plenty of that with the pulled pork meat, but it doesn’t absolutely need it if you’re not down with the sauce.

My daughter wasn’t sure about even trying this at first, but wound up cleaning her plate when she found she got to dip the meat in the barbecue sauce. She gave it a thumbs up.

Overall rating: 5 out of 5. This one turned out Ah-Maaa-Zing.


Kate Appelman is a couples and portrait photographer trying to keep up with two toddlers and keep everyone fed. Besides photography, Kate daydreams about actually making something from Pinterest and sometimes fitting in a CrossFit workout.

2 comments:

Erin said...

This sounds amazing but I'm a little confused about the cooking time here versus the cooking time in the source recipe. I'm assuming that the longer cooking time is because the meat wasn't thawed first?

Unknown said...

Hi Erin!

When I first looked at the recipe, I saw the 3-4 hours (hence my confusion initially!), but when I read it more closely, it actually says "Cook the roast on high for 5-6 hours and then turn down to low for another 3-4 hours or until the roast is literally falling apart and easy to shred."

Hope that helps - it turns out fantastic!