Day Late St Patrick

Apparently it's been a while since I posted. I know I've cooked since the beginning of the month.

At any rate, today I made corned beef. Boil it to death. Add potatoes, boil it some more. Add some cabbage, carrot, onion, boil again. Take it out, add butter to the veggies, and eat.

Well, simmer after most of the boils.

Either way, I could have done it in the crockpot, but I'm glad I didn't. It would not have fit. It also took a lot less time, obviously. It worked.

It's pretty tasty, but oddly, I like the veggie part better than the beef part. Kind of surprises me, because I usually like meat a lot better. The cabbage was quite good, even. Of course, adding butter to it all probably had something to do with that...

Pork shoulder butt

I kind of made this recipe a couple weeks ago, but I failed in two integral ways: One, I failed to notice that the recipe called for the pork shoulder to be cut up into pieces, and Two, I failed to add any vegetation. If you don't cut the pork up, half of it is above the liquid level, and is a bit dry and isn't saturated with flavor. If you don't add vegetation, it still tastes good, it just has no vegetables. I did learn that it wasn't particularly spicy with less than a tablespoon of the chili garlic sauce (which scares me). Oh, and while I ultimately made it and ate it... I almost didn't, because I forgot to set the timer properly, so it thought I wanted to cook it at night, rather than during the day like I'd planned. Nothing is more disappointing than coming home to a chunk of raw meat when you thought you were going to come home to actual food.

So I tried again.

I learned last time that apparently one does not buy a pork shoulder. One buys a pork shoulder butt. The internet has been a little unclear as to why this is; I have gathered that the term refers to a meaty cut from the shoulder region that's typically fairly fatty. OK. Sure.

So I mixed up the soy sauce, brown sugar, ginger, and a healthy spoonful of the chili garlic sauce. I trimmed fat and cut my meat up into chunks and added it to the crockpot. I turned it on (no timer this time!), and went to work.

I stopped at the grocery store for bok choy. I came home. I chopped bok choy. I added it to the pot. I let it sit for more than the 5min recommended in the recipe (wanted my greens actually cooked). I ate it.

Yum. Needs something more though. Oh yeah, maybe the rice that the recipe recommends (was being lazy). Or more variation of flavor - not sure what I'd put in though at this point. Just a touch spicy, pretty flavorful, and has greens in it. What else could I want? :-)