Creating FOOD

So far all of our blog posts have been about crafting.  But when we started this blog we meant to make it about all sorts of Creating, not necessarily crafting.  So here is a post about some food creating.  Yesterday I used our smoker for the first time all by myself.  I smoked a half of a small pork shoulder so we could pull it and use it for dinner.  This post will unfold through the pics…

 

Take pork shoulder, cover in seasoning of choice.


 

Seasoning of choice was WSU Espresso Seasoning & Rub.  Which is delicious!


 

Put Cherry Pellets into the smoker…


 

…Then watch this bad boy come to life.

 

Once Grill is to temperature (225 this time, a good amount of smoke, but not super slow to cook), put the pork on fat-side up.




I’m going to say that looks pretty delicious, even raw.  Lol.




But it looks way more delicious when it is getting close to temperature.  The seasoning on the outside starts to form this yummy crisp glaze.  Many times we spray it with apple cider to keep it moist and to form an even sweeter glaze on the outside, but yesterday I let the seasoning do all the work.




Ok.  So waiting and waiting and smelling that smoke all day starts to make me a little hungry.  This 3-4 pound piece took about 6 hours to reach 190F which is perfect pulling temperature.




I let the pork rest under some foil and dish towels until hubby got home from Lowes.  He pulled the pork for me.  J




At the beginning of the day I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with the pork, but by now I had decided we had enough of pulled pork sandwiches, and we were going to turn this one into enchiladas.  While hubby was pulling pork, I whipped up some lime-cilantro-sour cream.  (One juicy lime+1 cup sour cream+cilantro… recipe calls for 1tbsp, but since we LOVE cilantro you can tell I added a lot more!)  Then I set it aside to meld together as I made the rest of our meal.




I decided that even if I didn’t use all the meat for the enchiladas, the meat would still be good with a little bit of enchilada sauce and a small can of diced chiles mixed in.  So I threw it all in a container and shook it up!




My hands got messy so I stopped taking pics, but all I did was throw the meat mixture into some multi-grain tortillas, roll them, put them in pan, cover with green enchilada sauce, olives and cheese.




Then I baked this sucker for about 30 min at 400F.  20min with foil, 10 without so cheese could brown.




And voila!  Enchiladas with lime-cilantro-sour cream, and some leftover rotel tomatoes for garnish.  Delish!!!



Btw, waited to post this until today because I wanted to post pics of what I used the leftover meat for.  BUT, in the excitement of my pork nachos coming out of the oven, I totally forgot about pictures and just chowed down!  They made delicious nachos with some more olives, cheese, and jalapenos.  Can you tell we like Mexican food?  YUMM.

Now, to go clean the kitchen before company arrives…

Sam