Adventure #2: Pulled Pork

With the stew tasting really good last week, I'm ready for a new challenge and really excited to start considering myself an amateur cook!  This week I'm making pulled pork.  I looked at a bunch of recipes online, and decided to go with the Williams-Sonoma's recipe, with a few changes, recommended to me by someone at work. 

Pulled Pork:

Ingredients:
French rolls (any kind of roll or bread would work)
3tbs canola oil
4lbs boneless pork shoulder (cut into 3 equal pieces)
1 yellow onion
3/4 cups apple cider vinegar

3/4 cups ketchup
1/3 cup firmly packed brown sugar
2 tsp crushed red peppers
1 tbs worcestershire sauce
1 tsp dry mustard
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground pepper

Directions:

So I did this part a bit differently.  I am not a morning person by anyone's standards, so I decided to get as much done the night before as possible.  I finely chopped the onion and put in the fridge overnight.  I then mixed the 2nd half of ingredients in a bowl, sealed with plastic wrap, and put in the fridge as well. (It calls for red pepper flakes... is that the same as crushed red peppers?  No idea but that's what I ended up using)

In the morning I did the following:

Searing the pork

Onions~!

 
Put a large fry pan over medium-high heat and warmed the oil.  I seared the sides of the pork, hopefully locking in the juices.  Then I put the pork in my crockpot. Pour off all but 1 tbs of the fat, and reheat in the pan.  Add and saute the onion until golden. 

Mixing the sauce

Add the vinegar and de-glaze the pan (had no idea what this mean, so I googled it and watched this youtube video to learn).  Then stir in the mixture from last night (which is pretty much homemade BBQ sauce).  Cook, stirring occasionally, until the sauce starts to bubble.

Everything smelled AMAZING separately, but I'm not going to lie, when I added the vinegar and the mixture to the pan it started to have a B.O.-like smell, and I have no idea why, but there's nothing I could to about it, so I'm praying that the ingredients just needed time to blend the deliciousness into an amazing aroma and its back to its amazingness tonight.

 

Pour over the pork, put the lid on, and cook on low for 8-10 hours.  Now off to work!