Slow Cooked Pork with Ginger Beer BBQ Sauce

My blog is fixed! The below post was meant to post last Friday after a truly dreary week. Over the weekend, with lots of crazy work stuff and the anniversary of 9/11 happening, along with my blog being down, I got to take some time to let go, not really by choice, but it was kind of nice and reminded me how great my life is. It’s something I am trying to remember every day, and I am really happy to be back blogging.

I am loving the below recipe, which will be perfect for these chillier nights.

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Well, despite my best efforts to ignore the change, summer seemed to slip away this week, bringing unnecessary rain and cold. The downside? Rain and cold. The upside? It was a perfect time to do some slow-cooking of something I had a major craving for, pulled pork. The vegetarian in me is always surprised, but I do love well-spiced pork, cooked for a day, falling apart in a spicy sauce.

I picked up a pork roast at Market Basket over the weekend and put the rub on over 24 hours before cooking. My rub was a mix of all sorts of things: cinnamon, cayenne pepper, Tyler Florence’s brown sugar pork rub, garlic powder (lots!), My Spice Sage BBQ seasoning, black pepper, salt, and red pepper flakes.

Once the spices were mixed, I gave the roast a good rub, liberally coating it with the mix. It smelled amazing.

On cooking day, I pulled out the pork, already hanging out in the slow cooker bowl. To the slow cooker I added a can of Gosling’s ginger beer (also perfect for cocktails) and a whole can of tomato paste.

I also chopped up a small handful of the beautiful local peppers I bought for my cod dish. I’d done a quick pickle to preserve them, and they added a bright, spicy, and vinegar-y touch to the pork. I also poured in about 1/2 cup white vinegar.

The ginger beer and tomato paste broke down into a rich, spicy sauce with a hint of sweet and made for some of the most tender pulled pork I have ever had.

We ate it atop salads with a homemade peach salsa, mountains of cilantro, and Greek yogurt, and again the next day in Tortilla Land tortillas with the same toppings. It was the stuff that chilly fall Sundays are made of, and I will definitely be repeating this recipe.

Annnnd I am glad that the weekend is going to be warm and sunny. I refuse to acknowledge the end of summer until the boat is in winter storage.

Are you still with me in summer, have you moved to fall or are you feeling somewhere in between?