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For New Year's Eve, my fiance and I made a delicious Moroccan-style beef stew inspired by the lamb stew made by Michael Chiarello on a recent episode of Easy Entertaining. We started by searing the beef (we used boneless chuck) on the stove with a little flour, salt and pepper. We pulled the beef off and stuck it in the crock pot. In the same pan, we sauteed a mix of cippolini/yellow onions and carrots (both from my family's Pete's Greens Good Eats Localvore CSA) with gourmet baby yukon golds. We threw in paprika, chili powder, cumin, coriander, parsley, and cinnamon. We tossed the veggies in with the beef and deglazed the pan with some delicious cabernet sauvignon. We added the wine to the beef and veggies along with some chicken stock, a giant rosemary sprig and a few tablespoons of thick pomegranate sauce (Narsharab from Azerbaijan), and let it go for the rest of the day (maybe 6 hours?). The result was a deliciously fragrant stew -- perfectly tender veggies and melt-in-your-mouth beef.
We served the stew alongside an Israeli couscous salad with chickpeas, celery, and quick-preserved lemons, dressed with extra virgin olive oil and fresh-squeezed tangerine juice. We mixed the salad in as we ate and the combination was fabulous. The only pitfall here was that our crockpot is small. =)
I've had such success lately with slow-cooker pulled chicken that I decided to delve into trying slow-cooker pulled pork. We had a whey-fed pork shoulder (from Willow Hill Farm) in the freezer, so I threw it into the slow-cooker, topped it with lots of delicious ingredients, and let it hang out for 10 hours. It was frozen, so I started the slow-cooker on high, let it go for about 4 hours, then turned it down to low for the rest of the day. The result was a tender and delicious mound of sweet pulled pork. If you start with a thawed pork shoulder, low for 8 hours should do just fine.
I was inspired by the pulled pork on Baking Bites, and tweaked the recipe to accommodate what I had in the kitchen. I served the pork on crusty rolls with slaw and sharp cheddar.
Easy Slow-Cooker Pulled Pork
3.5# pork shoulder roast
1 large onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, sliced or chopped (it will melt into the sauce)
1/3 cup ketchup
1/3 cup cider vinegar
1/4 cup brown sugar (light or dark)
1/3 cup fire-roasted tomato sauce
2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
2 tbsp grainy mustard
2 tsp paprika (I used sweet, not hot)
pinch cayenne pepper
3/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
3/4 cup water
3 tbsp maple syrup
1. Place pork shoulder in slow-cooker
2. Add all remaining ingredients
3. You may want to move some things around so that the pork is covered by the sauce
4. Set the slow-cooker to low
5. Cover, and let cook for 8 hours (If pork is frozen, try doing what I did!)
For New Year's Eve, my fiance and I made a delicious Moroccan-style beef stew inspired by the lamb stew made by Michael Chiarello on a recent episode of Easy Entertaining. We started by searing the beef (we used boneless chuck) on the stove with a little flour, salt and pepper. We pulled the beef off and stuck it in the crock pot. In the same pan, we sauteed a mix of cippolini/yellow onions and carrots (both from my family's Pete's Greens Good Eats Localvore CSA) with gourmet baby yukon golds. We threw in paprika, chili powder, cumin, coriander, parsley, and cinnamon. We tossed the veggies in with the beef and deglazed the pan with some delicious cabernet sauvignon. We added the wine to the beef and veggies along with some chicken stock, a giant rosemary sprig and a few tablespoons of thick pomegranate sauce (Narsharab from Azerbaijan), and let it go for the rest of the day (maybe 6 hours?). The result was a deliciously fragrant stew -- perfectly tender veggies and melt-in-your-mouth beef.
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