January Cooking Club Challenge: Pork Loin Roast with Rice and Peas

January Cooking Club Challenge: Pork Loin Roast with Rice and Peas

By Sandi Richard

Ingredients:

Directions:

Heat butter in large stove-top frying pan at medium heat.

Add garlic and onions. Sauté until onions are translucent. Remove from heat.

Place pork loin in slow cooker.

Combine following ingredients in a bowl: ketchup, brown sugar and molasses.

Add cider vinegar, raspberry vinegar, blueberry vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, hot pepper sauce and apricot jam.

Add 1 can of Coke (optional)

Add sautéed onions to slow cooker.

In the morning return centre pot with cover to the outer crock and set on low heat.

Rice

At supper time combine rice and water in a microwave-safe pot or casserole. Cover and microwave rice at high for 10 minutes, then medium 10 minutes. (Reserve half of the cooked rice for lunches and Asian Stir Fry meal).

Peas:

Place peas in stove-top pot with a small amount of water at high heat.

When it begins to boil, turn heat to low. Stir and heat through.

Now, if you’re like me, you are probably wondering what is up with the pork loin part of the recipe. Where exactly do you add the liquid? Does it all go into the slow cooker? Or is this a marinade?

Well thanks to Mr. Chips (thanks honey!), he found another recipe by Sandi Richard (Pork Loin with Rice and Broccoli) that is virutally identical with the details we are looking for. It reads as follows:

Ingredients

1 teaspoon Canola Oil

1 Onion

2 teaspoons Prepared Garlic in a Jar

3 pounds (1350 gms) Lean Pork Loin Roast

1 can Cola or Orange or Ginger Ale (355 ml)

1 cup Ketchup

2 tablespoons Brown Sugar

2 tablespoons Molasses

1/4 cup Cider Vinegar

1/4 cup Blackberry Vinegar (Or any other fruit vinegar you have on hand)

1 tablespoon Worcestershire Sauce

2 teaspoons Hot Pepper Sauce

1 cup Apricot Jam (All fruit variety)

2 -3 Broccoli Florets

1/8 Tsp (Pinch) Mrs. Dash Table Blend

1 1/2 cups Basmati Rice

3 cups Water

Directions

Take out Equipment and ingredients.

The night before: Heat oil in a large stove-top fry pan at medium heat. Finely chop onion and add to pan as you chop.

Add garlic to pan.

Sauté until onions are translucent. Remove from heat and set aside.

Meanwhile: Place pork loin roast in slow cooker. Pour the following ingredients over the roast in this order: Cola, ketchup, brown sugar and molasses. Stir.

Add cider vinegar, blueberry vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, hot pepper sauce, apricot jam, and apricots to bowl. Stir and pour over roast.

Pour one can of Coke over roast (optional). Add sautéed onions to slow cooker. Store overnight in the fridge.

In the morning: Return centre crock with cover to the outer crock and set on low heat.

When you get home for supper: Rinse broccoli in colander. Place in microwave-safe pot or casserole with lid. Cover and microwave at high for 3 minutes then let stand.

Combine rice and water in a large microwave-safe pot or casserole. Cover and microwave rice at high 10 minutes, then medium 10 minutes. Let stand.

When timer rings for rice, add spice to broccoli, stir and re-heat one additional minute.

Tadaa! Isn’t that second recipe clearer to follow that the first? I thought so. To that end, I used the ingredients from recipe #1 and followed the direction for recipe #2.

Now, the results. I used brown rice instead of basmati because I am trying very hard to make use of what we have on hand before running out and buying more. I thought the sauce was similar to a sweet and sour sauce. And there was a TON of it in the crock pot. I laddled some out and set it on the stove in a saucepan to reduce a bit before spooning some over the pork roast. The meat itself I took out of the crock pot and placed in a pan with hot butter to brown the outsides a bit. The taste was fine but it was dry. I can’t figure that out for the life of me considering how much cooking liquid there was. The only thing I can think of is that I had a very lean piece of meat to begin with.

I really liked that this month’s challenge was an entire meal and it was very practical and allowed you to make the most of your time on a busy day. :0)

I give this recipe a very respectable 7.5 chips out of a bag of 10.