Five Meals with Fischer Family Farms Pork

Gerg enjoys a slice of Fischer Family Farms Pulled Pork Pizza

Gerg and I purchased a 6lb Fischer Family Farms Pork shoulder roast. Such good news.

Before we proceeded, we realized this piece of meat would likely sustain us for almost a week (with some non-pork meals in between), so we planned a to get about 5-6 meals worth out of one roast. I suppose could easily freeze the pulled pork after preparing it if you didn't want to eat pulled pork all week. We managed to eat pulled pork all week and not get bored.

Cooking the Roast

We used a simple preparation to cook the meat, since we wanted it to be adaptable to several recipes:

• Fischer Farms pork shoulder roast, about 6 pounds
• 2 medium onions, thinly sliced
• 1 1/2 cups water
• 1 bottle (24 ounces) of New Glarus Enigma
• salt
• pepper
  

Place half of the thinly sliced onions in bottom of slow cooker; add pork, water, and 12 oz of beer. Top with remaining onion slices. Season with salt and pepper. Cover and cook on LOW for 8 to 10 hours. Remove the roast, shred the pork into pieces in a separate container. Drink the other 12 oz of beer. Word!


Preparing the Meals


Meal One:
Kansas City-style BBQ pulled Pork Sandwich

Scoop up 8oz of the prepared pulled pork, place it on a whole grain roll, top it with Kansas City style sauce and old fashioned coleslaw.

We served ours with roasted brussels sprouts on the side, which are the bomb-diggity.

Roasted brussels sprouts:
Preheat oven to 450°F with rack in upper third.

Cut brussel sprouts in half, lengthwise. Toss brussels sprouts with olive oil, truffle salt, and pepper. Arrange, cut sides down, in a 17- by 12-inch shallow baking pan. Roast, without turning, until outer leaves are tender and very dark brown, 40 to 45 minutes.

Meal Two: (fast lunch for two)
BBQ pulled pork open-faced sandwich with SweeTango apple slices.

Warm 8oz of the leftover pulled pork, place it on a piece of whole grain toast, and top it with BBQ sauce. Slice up some SweeTangos for a sweet and snappy side dish.

Meal Three:
Pulled Pork Gyozas (potstickers) with Steamed Vegetables

• 16 oz. pulled pork
  
• 1 bunch of green onions
• 1/2 bunch cilantro
  
• 1 thumb-size piece of ginger
• 2 garlic cloves
• 2 Tbs. soy sauce
• 1 Tbs. dark sesame oil
• 1 pack of gyoza skins (24 skins in each pack)
• 1 cup shredded cabbage (we left it out since we had coleslaw and brussels sprouts the day before)
  

Finely chop the green onions. Grate the ginger and garlic cloves. Mix all the ingredients (except for the gyoza skins and oil for frying) in a bowl. Let the meat marinate for about an hour, if possible. There are many methods for cooking gyoza. I like this one: http://www.doobybrain.com/2010/04/10/cooking-yaki-gyoza-with-a-dog/

We served our gyoza with steamed sugar snap peas, carrots, and broccoli. Serve with unfiltered sake FTW.

Meal Four:
Pulled Pork Pizza (makes 2 10" pizzas)

Prepare a crust or buy some pizza dough.

Our basic pizza dough:
1 cup warm water
1/4 ounce yeast (about 2 tsp)
1 tsp honey
2 tsp truffle olive oil
1 tsp truffle salt
3 tbsp corn meal

Place the yeast and honey into the warm water. Stir other ingredients together. Pour the yeast mixture into the flour mixture. Stir until combined. Form into a dough ball. Let the dough rise in a covered bowl until it doubles. Beat it down. Roll it out. Sprinkle your pizza pan with cornmeal. Place the rolled out crust on the pan (slightly prebake the crust before adding toppings if you want a super crunchy crust).

Top the crust in the following order with pulled pork, sliced red peppers, sliced crimini mushrooms, diced cipollini onions, fresh grated garlic, fresh sliced mozzarella cheese, and grated Parmesan. Serve with your favorite sauce on the side, dude. We made our sauce with rosemary and basil, and it was boss.

We served our pizza with basil vodka lemonades.

Meal Five: Leftover pizza (fast lunch for two)



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