PALEO PUDDING

HANGOVER PORK

If you are new to the paleo thing and you haven’t invested in a slow cooker yet, go buy one immediately. Especially if you are anywhere near as lazy as I am. These things are fucking amazing — you just put ingredients in, and FOOD comes out.

I made this pork with a massive hangover in the morning on New Year’s Day. That’s how easy it is. 

Acquire: 

• 1 champagne-induced hangover, sprinkled with minor regret and a blurry memory of New Year’s Eve
• 5 pounds of pork shoulder, bone in
• chili powder
• cumin
• onion powder
• smoked paprika
• cayenne pepper
• 1 onion, sliced fajita style
• 1 can of fire-roasted tomatoes
• 1-2 cans of green chiles
• salsa (optional)

Step 1. Admire your pork. Take it out of the fridge, sprinkle some salt and pepper all over it, and let it hang out and watch you prepare its seasonings. You don’t want it to be fridge-temperature when you give it its pre-slow cooker rub down. Don’t be stingy with that salt, either.

Step 2. Prepare your rub. I used my go-to “fiesta mix.” Adjust the proportions however you desire. For this size of beast, this ought to do:

• 1 shotglass* full of chili powder
• 1/2 shotglass of cumin
• 1/4 shotglass each of onion powder and smoked paprika
• cayenne pepper to taste

(*I have a lazy habit of using random things I find on my kitchen counter in place of actual cooking tools. Also, clean the shotglass first. I might have gotten a little Jameson in my fiesta mix.)

I actually typically make this spice mix in bulk and keep a jar of it next to the stove. It tastes good on every meat there is.

Step 3. RUB YOUR MEAT!

Get the fiesta EVERYWHERE. In all of its porky nether-regions and even some underneath your fingernails.

Step 4. Line your slow cooker with sliced onions, then dump in 1 can of fire-roasted tomatoes and 1 or 2 of those tiny cans of green chile. Season this layer with some more salt, pepper, and a sprinkling of fiesta mix. 

Step 5. Place your pig on its oniony bed, and turn on the slow cooker. I did 8 hours on low. 

Step 6. Find something else to do for 7 hours. I immediately went back to bed for a deep hangover-induced snore-fest. Then, I drank 2 gallons of coffee and hovered around the kitchen counter, sniffing the air around the crock pot. 

Step 7. Grab a few forks and start shredding your pork into bite-sized pieces. Remove the bone and any big fatty-fat pieces you find. Spoon off some of the liquid, if you’d like. I poured off most of the liquid, and dumped in half a tub of Wholly Salsa, just to see what would happen. Give everything a good mix, then put the lid back on and let the slow cooker finish up.

Step 8. Consume.

I ate this in lettuce wrap form, topped with grilled red bell peppers, some homemade pico de gallo, and guacamole. 

The next day, I put some pork on a baking sheet and topped it with a few slices of bacon and tossed it in the oven. Once the bacon was cooked and the edges of the pork were crispy, I served it up with some eggs and a green salad. 

Leftovers would be awesome in omelette form, in a soup, stuffed into a pepper, or sitting on top of a zucchini canoe. Make some of that cauliflower rice stuff and pretend it’s a Chipotle burrito bowl. 

Or just stand with your ass sticking out of the fridge, bent over and eating leftover pork out of the tupperware with your hands.