Photo by Ree Drummond, The Pioneer Woman herself. I hope mine tastes as good as this looks.
…because I am cooking this:
The Pioneer Woman’s Spicy Dr. Pepper Shredded Pork
I’m making it for three reasons:
1) I live in Texas now, and I believe there is some kind of law here that you have to cook with Dr. Pepper on a regular basis. If there is not, there should be.
I know there’s a law that Dr. Pepper must be offered in every restaurant. I’m sure of it. Also there is an addendum that you should probably oughta offer Diet DP as well, to please the womenfolk, as they say.
This has been problematic for me, as Diet Dr Pepper is my achilles heel when it comes to what I affectionately term “cancer juice.” Yes, I am powerless before its strange chemical-laden flavor profile and tiny, tiny bubbles. To hold the Big C at bay, I have promised myself only to drink it when I can get it on tap, much as my husband has pledged to the Guinness Brewing Company.
Anyway, I’ve been hearing for some time about adding soda (usually Coke) to various braised meat recipes and thought hey, since I’m in Dr Pepper land, I’d better go that route instead.
PLUS, our local grocery chain, the fine H-E-B (which is growing on me greatly), offers a CANE SUGAR version of Dr Pepper that DH (who refuses the diet stuff) actually prefers to the HFCS-sporting original.
So we actually have “Dr B” in tonight’s pork (brief aside: Dr B is clever and all, but nothing will ever beat Dr Thunder for genius brand lifting), with sugar from our friends at Imperial Sugar formerly of Sugar Land, Texas, where I shop at the Farmer’s Market. What a fine Texas meal this is turning out to be.
2) Speaking of shopping locally and H-E-B, they have the freaking best tortillas ever. They even have a machine to make them (“El Machino” in Chevy’s parlance) that keeps the kiddos entertained whilst Momma visits the wine tasting station. Yes, I really am enjoying my local grocery store. And I get their tortillas almost every week, hot off the press, and it really is a challenge to keep the family from eating the whole bag before dinner is on the table.
So I intentionally look for dinner dishes that will give me an excuse to buy these flattened globs of white flour & fat. Yum O.
3) Most importantly, this all came about because I had a pork shoulder to use up from the wonderful Jolie Vue farms. Since moving to Houston not quite two years ago, I haven’t had much luck finding a CSA for veggies that I love. They’re all either too expensive (I was super spoiled in California by the cheap produce), don’t deliver close enough to me, don’t have enough variety (see: spoiled by California), or some even use pesticides, which is SO last century.
But, I had the fantastic fortune to meet Honi Boudreaux (gotta love those Bayou City names!), a genuine force of nature herself, at a talk I gave last summer at t’afia restaurant (where I also got to visit with the amazing Monica Pope, a true believer in the Slow Food cause). Later I asked the Boudreaux’s (Boudreauxes?) to come and talk at my church for my series on Slow Food: Slow Worship.
Our piggies rooting in their personal pecan forest
In the midst of all this, I got super excited about their farm and signed up for home meat delivery, which is an incredible bargain at $220 per delivery but unfortunately I can only afford to do it every second or third month (which is fine, because there’s enough meat in there – and we eat meat infrequently enough – that it lasts that long).
This is, by the way, exactly what I want to encourage all of you to do: eat locally-sourced meat from a rancher or farmer whom you know personally, who will let you visit the farm and meet the animals, who treats them with respect and honor as God’s creatures, and who uses a “glass house” butcher. No funny business in this meat. It’s so much more expensive, and it’s worth every penny. When I can’t afford to eat meat like this, I simply don’t eat meat.
OK this is getting long…my point is that like with a veggie CSA (“Iron Chef Veggie Box” we call it around here), a meat CSA loads you up with all these weird cuts you wouldn’t normally cook, or bother purchasing. At least we wouldn’t.
So in the last few weeks I’ve made a brisket (divine) and now this shoulder which will become carnitas (sort of…not fried). We had a pork belly the first month. Those things go for like 60 bucks a pound in NYC! It was out of this world braised in an agave glaze. AND we got to render the lard and wound up with cracklins (which I put in mac and cheese…OMG).
Anyway we have been really thrilled with getting local meat and I really can’t stress enough how much more delicious it is than the supermarket junk. It’s becoming impossible for me to eat white pork anymore (did you know pork isn’t actually “the other white meat”? That was made up by pork producers to convince consumers to believe the lie that pork isn’t red; a pig will only have white meat when it’s been kept out of the sun). Forested pigs like ours have a beautiful marbled ruby or garnet color to their meat, and the taste is truly beyond compare.
So now that I’m salivating (and I have like four more hours to wait, dang it!) I’d better stop writing about this shoulder. BUT I will ask a favor from any foodie readers out there: we have a NECK of all things (it’s either pork or beef, I honestly can’t tell and it’s not labeled) and also a huge blob of pork fat to use up. Any ideas???
FoodiEvangelist 