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May. 4th, 2017 03:05 pmWet days. To quote Big Dipper, "another wet weekend." Except it's not the weekend. Did I mention that I'm a bit off from sleep dep?
Last night I got a ten pound pork butt and tried to do some slow cooking on it. I tried the classic "so easy any idiot can do it!" method of making pulled pork and it ended up involving me burn-frying ten pounds of pork butt, cramming ten pounds of pork butt into 6 quarts of slow cooker, adding some packets of barbecue sauce, some ingredients that would constitute barbecue sauce (ketchup, worcestershire sauce, garlic powder, maple syrup), and the deglazed burnt parts of the pork butt that were removed through white wine and then added to the slow cooker.
At 3 am, we heard the distinctive crackle and snap of pork broth, pork grease, barbecue sauce, and white wine spilling off the table from an overloaded pressure cooker. In turn, waking up abruptly like that gave me a migraine, so yay me. Massacred several sheets of paper towels to sop up my shame on the floor and the table and then we put it on a baking sheet.
Morning was better, it seems the leakage wasn't that bad. More paper towels were sacrificed to clean out the hot plate part of the slow cooker.
If you aren't familiar with why this doesn't surprise me, let me tell you: I think slow cookers are awful. Every time I've used one, I find the recipe never comes out the way I would like it to if I did it conventionally. Sometimes the taste is off, sometimes something is overcooked, sometimes the whole thing is watery, etc. The only thing I ever found useful with slow cookers is finishing up a dish like a freshly blended mix of acorn squash soup.
What drives me crazy about this is I have friends who swear by the things and hoard recipes for it like they were arcane spells. I recall a Gastropod episode about "super tasters" and I can't help but wonder if I'm part of this group but only when it comes to god damned crockpots because I feel like I can eat almost anything.
Anyway, I've usually done pulled pork a more "traditional" way using an oven and a double-wrap of foil over a vessel of smoke-infused water. I was hoping this would save me some marinade time, but the worst part of this whole experience is that I have a part of this roast that's undercooked so what the hell.
Left the slow cooker on "warm" setting and put the undercooked part closer to the heating elements of the crockpot, hopefully that will fix the issue by the time we get back home.
Maybe I can use the leftover broth for a chili? Haven't done one in awhile.
Plants look a little sickly, potentially bitten into by pests, but one has a sign of spots which means fungus. Treated with copper fungicide the other day, probably will do another treatment once I get home since it rained yesterday.
This weekend I need to remind myself to go harvesting fiddleheads among other things (more weeding, need to mod a tray to hold pot lids, etc.). Two window fans also came in and I'll look forward to using those since the stainless steel gets too hot for olive oil and I like to utilize the smokiness of the oil on whatever I stir fry, so ventilation can save this! Or I can get lung cancer!
Oh, company treated us to lunch and a room to eat it in, but there were no seats when I got there, so ended up eating at my desk. I know that sounds pathetic, but I feel more comfortable by myself. Regardless, the department head checked in on me, and encouraged me to head over. I understand why she mentioned that, but I feel awkward around that many people. And I think someone ate my toast. Oh, sadness!
Okay, back to work.
Last night I got a ten pound pork butt and tried to do some slow cooking on it. I tried the classic "so easy any idiot can do it!" method of making pulled pork and it ended up involving me burn-frying ten pounds of pork butt, cramming ten pounds of pork butt into 6 quarts of slow cooker, adding some packets of barbecue sauce, some ingredients that would constitute barbecue sauce (ketchup, worcestershire sauce, garlic powder, maple syrup), and the deglazed burnt parts of the pork butt that were removed through white wine and then added to the slow cooker.
At 3 am, we heard the distinctive crackle and snap of pork broth, pork grease, barbecue sauce, and white wine spilling off the table from an overloaded pressure cooker. In turn, waking up abruptly like that gave me a migraine, so yay me. Massacred several sheets of paper towels to sop up my shame on the floor and the table and then we put it on a baking sheet.
Morning was better, it seems the leakage wasn't that bad. More paper towels were sacrificed to clean out the hot plate part of the slow cooker.
If you aren't familiar with why this doesn't surprise me, let me tell you: I think slow cookers are awful. Every time I've used one, I find the recipe never comes out the way I would like it to if I did it conventionally. Sometimes the taste is off, sometimes something is overcooked, sometimes the whole thing is watery, etc. The only thing I ever found useful with slow cookers is finishing up a dish like a freshly blended mix of acorn squash soup.
What drives me crazy about this is I have friends who swear by the things and hoard recipes for it like they were arcane spells. I recall a Gastropod episode about "super tasters" and I can't help but wonder if I'm part of this group but only when it comes to god damned crockpots because I feel like I can eat almost anything.
Anyway, I've usually done pulled pork a more "traditional" way using an oven and a double-wrap of foil over a vessel of smoke-infused water. I was hoping this would save me some marinade time, but the worst part of this whole experience is that I have a part of this roast that's undercooked so what the hell.
Left the slow cooker on "warm" setting and put the undercooked part closer to the heating elements of the crockpot, hopefully that will fix the issue by the time we get back home.
Maybe I can use the leftover broth for a chili? Haven't done one in awhile.
Plants look a little sickly, potentially bitten into by pests, but one has a sign of spots which means fungus. Treated with copper fungicide the other day, probably will do another treatment once I get home since it rained yesterday.
This weekend I need to remind myself to go harvesting fiddleheads among other things (more weeding, need to mod a tray to hold pot lids, etc.). Two window fans also came in and I'll look forward to using those since the stainless steel gets too hot for olive oil and I like to utilize the smokiness of the oil on whatever I stir fry, so ventilation can save this! Or I can get lung cancer!
Oh, company treated us to lunch and a room to eat it in, but there were no seats when I got there, so ended up eating at my desk. I know that sounds pathetic, but I feel more comfortable by myself. Regardless, the department head checked in on me, and encouraged me to head over. I understand why she mentioned that, but I feel awkward around that many people. And I think someone ate my toast. Oh, sadness!
Okay, back to work.
