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Saturday evening, I put a pork roast in my Instant Pot® using the slow cooker function and allowed it to cook all night. I slept to the soothing aroma of pork yumtastic-ness happening in my kitchen. Best night of sleep!
Sunday morning I took it out shredded it and used it to make tacos for lunch. I topped it with my roasted tomato salsa recipe. The meat will be great for lunches this week as well as for emergency protein on days when work gets too crazy to have time to make a full meal.
I used the Kalua Pig recipe from Nom Nom Paleo’s cookbook, with a few modifications. It’s a beautifully simple recipe that allows the meat to shine. Nom Nom Paleo's recipes are amazing. Check out her cookbook. It's an investment.
The first time I made the Kalua Pig was for New Year’s Day. I overcooked the meat and found the extra cooking liquid I added made it a bit too salty. This time, I reduced the salt slightly and added a little water to the pot. I didn’t measure the salt. I just made sure to use enough to cover the roast well before placing it in the pot. I reasoned that each roast is a slightly different size so I should adjust the salt to fit the meat. It was perfect.
To keep the meat moist, I added about ¼ cup to ½ cup water to the pot after I added the meat to the pot. That was maybe a ½ inch of water in the bottom of the pot after the meat was set in the pot. I also had an extra slice of bacon to cover the bottom of the pan to help keep the meat moist while it cooked and provide some fat to keep the meat from burning to the bottom of the pot. This also allowed for any evaporation that might occur due to the steam venting from the Instant Pot. I also ended cooking 2 hours before the recipe.
This time the meat was still moist when it came out. There was only a little liquid in the bottom of the pot, which was all I needed to add flavor and moisture to the meat. I might consider next time adding a little more liquid and possibly be just a tad more generous with the salt but not by much. Otherwise, it turned out perfectly and is a solid start to preparing for the 21-Day Sugar Detox that I am starting on March 3, 2014.
What I learned is to trust my instincts. Recipes are a great start. They help you understand the structure of flavors coming together. Ultimately, it’s up to the cook to pair those flavors with the ingredients at hand. If you have a smaller or larger roast than what the recipe calls for, you need to adjust the ingredients. If your cooking utensils have limitations, factor that into your recipe preparation. For example, my Dutch ovens seem to allow for far more evaporation than any recipe takes into account. When I cook with them, I always add more liquid than is called for in the recipe to account for that loss of liquid.
In other words, just because a recipe didn’t work out as planned, doesn’t mean that you didn’t follow the directions. Sometimes you need to account for differences in your cooking utensils or your oven. Pay attention when you are cooking to see if certain pans seem to cook a little hotter or if your oven has hot spots. Take that information into account when preparing a recipe.
