It's been a long time since my last post. I blame that on the amount of daydreaming I've done about the food we had whilst in America (see previous post). As mentioned in that post I mentioned that the best place we ate was the Top of the Hill Grill in Brattleboro, Vermont. The smoky pulled pork, perfectly grilled chicken, fall-off-the-bone ribs and moist brisket all topped off with great cornbread, baked beans and coleslaw. Just fantastic. Exactly the kind of food I love to cook as well as eat.
I wanted to try to recreate, as close as possible, the meals we had there. I thought the cornbread, coleslaw and to a certain extent the baked beans would be relatively simple. I decided to omit the chicken and the brisket and keep my task to a minimum.
I started with the pulled pork. It surprised me how easy this was in a
slow cooker. It came out just slightly dry so in the recipe below I've
reduced the cooking time. I used Dr Pepper but if you're not a fan Coke
would be a good replacement. It worked well, I suppose it's there to
keep it as moist as possible as opposed to flavour.
Next the cornbread. I found literally hundreds of differing recipes for cornbread. It just seems like one of those things that everyone has their own way of doing it and everyone thinks their way is the best. I found one that looked good and adapted it slightly. The recipe called for quite a bit of sugar but after researching classic Southern cornbread has little or no sugar so I reduced that amount.
I used the cooking liquor from the pork to coat my rack of ribs as well as adding brown sugar and barbecue sauce and left the ribs alone in the oven at a very low heat for around 4 hours. When they came out the aroma was something special and the meat was fall off the bone tender.
The slow cooker was again used for the baked beans. And again, it was simple. I used a tin of butter beans, an onion, passata, ketchup, BBQ sauce and brown sugar. Throw it all in and leave it. I don't think I'll buy a tin of beans again!
The coleslaw was of course the easiest of the lot. I used one of those stir-fry vegetable packs you can buy at all supermarkets and added 4 tablespoons of mayo and 2 teaspoons of wholegrain mustard and mixed until all combined.
Now for the recipes. There's quite a few but the methods are easy so bear with me!
Dr Pepper Pulled Pork
6 Pork Steaks (or a pork joint)
330ml bottle Dr Pepper
4 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed
2 tbsp Cayenne Pepper
2 tbsp Paprika
2 tbsp Brown Sugar
200ml Apple Cider Vinegar
Method:
1. Place pork and the dry ingredients in your slow cooker (set to LOW) and then pour over the liquids. Leave for 3 hours if using the pork steaks, 5-6 hours if using a joint.
2. Remove meat from cooker and use two forks to shred the meat. Smother in BBQ sauce and enjoy!
Sticky BBQ Ribs
One rack of pork ribs
Cooking liquor from the pork
Brown sugar
BBQ sauce
Method:
1. In a large, deep baking tray pour the cooking liquor from the pork. Place the rack of ribs on top.
2. On top of the ribs put a layer of brown sugar and another layer of BBQ sauce.
3. Set oven temperature to 100C and cook for approx 4 hours or until meat is tender.
Baked Beans
One tin butter beans (or haricot)
One jar/carton passata
Squeeze of ketchup (to taste)
Squeeze of BBQ sauce (to taste)
One onion, chopped
2 tbsp brown sugar
Method:
1. Place and pour everything in the slow cooker, set to LOW, cook for approximately 5-6 hours. That's it!
Cornbread
200g Cornmeal (I found this in the world foods section in the supermarket, polenta will work too but classic cornbread is always with fine cornmeal)
65g Plain Flour
100g White Sugar
2 Eggs
115g Unsalted Butter
235ml Buttermilk
1tsp Baking Powder
Pinch of Salt
Method:
1. Melt butter in a saucepan, remove from the heat and add the sugar then quickly beat in the eggs.
2. Combine the buttermilk and baking powder and add this to the butter, sugar and egg mixture.
3. Combine the cornmeal, flour and salt and add this to the mixture. Stir together until few lumps remain. You can then transfer the batter to muffin tins or I just used a standard loaf tin.
4. Bake in the oven at 180C for 30 minutes. Insert a knife into the middle of the loaf, if it comes out clean it's cooked.
Hopefully you try one or all of these recipes. I'd recommend the cornbread especially. It's incredibly versatile and can be made more sweet or savoury, just add or remove sugar. For a true taste of America, try it all together!
Thanks for reading!
Ben
