I know, I know. I haven’t posted in 10 entire days. I have no excuse, other than the fact I was sick for much of last week, and then there was Thanksgiving. Ah, Thanksgiving. My favourite cooking holiday. This year, however, I had a little bit of a turkey disaster. Basically, the 16 pounder we had purchased went bad in the fridge somehow, and we only discovered this at 11pm the night before. So we were left desperate and turkey-less – where the hell were we going to find a turkey on thanksgiving eve?? All we could find were frozen birds at the 24 hour grocery stores, and I didn’t have enough time to defrost one (and frozen, really?). I had a mini meltdown and started planning my no-turkey thanksgiving (a tragedy in and of itself).

Somehow, however, my ever-resourceful father-in-law managed to find a turkey at a local grocery store that had been defrosting for the past 24 hours. He dropped it off the next morning, and damn – this thing was scary looking. I’m pretty sure that someone killed this turkey, plucked the feathers out, then stuck it in the freezer. No, really. The neck was still attached and there were feather roots still intact. The legs were spread eagle (slutty bird), and it was completely different than the lovely, organized prepared-for-roasting turkeys I’ve grown accustomed to. Oh, and I had to spend the entire morning defrosting the rest of it in the sink.

After thawing it out and performing minor surgery, I somehow managed to remove the neck (while I contemplated vegetarianism), and got the troubled bird ready for stuffing. All in all, it still turned out okay, but definitely not as juicy as a fresh turkey. Here’s a pic of how it turned out:

Not too bad, considering, Anyway, I have a bunch of thanksgiving recipes to post but for now, I wanted to share a delicious and simple pulled pork recipe. I made it tonight and oh my goodness – you need to make this ASAP. It’s so easy and made in the slow cooker, so you barely have to do a thing. I’ve been wanting to make pulled pork since my post about pulled chicken, but my grocer never had pork shoulder/butt. Admittedly, for this one, I used pork shoulder blade steaks, but they turned out amazingly well. Kind of like pork back ribs, but shredded. So, so good.

Seriously Delicious and Insanely Easy Slow Cooker Pulled Pork

Pork shoulder/butt roast or shoulder blade steaks
Bottle Root Beer (or any carbonated beverage. I haven’t personally tried with others, but I hear beer works well, as does regular club soda)
Salt, pepper and garlic powder to taste
Bottle of your favourite BBQ sauce

Place pork in your slow cooker. Season with salt, pepper and garlic powder on both sides. Pour root beer over the pork, making sure to cover well. Cook on low for about 8 hours (6 hours if using steaks), or until meat starts to fall apart. Remove the pork from the slow cooker and shred with two forks. Discard the remaining liquid. Replace the pork into the slow cooker, and pour your BBQ sauce over top (I used only about half the bottle for my steaks, but for a roast, you may need to use the whole bottle). Cook for another hour on high, or 2-3 hours on low. Serve on toasted buns with caramelized onions (optional). Enjoy!

Have a wonderful weekend,

-Monica