Sweet and Sour Pork Roast Made in a Crock Pot.

So, I was going through some cooking magazines and saw several recipes geared towards "sweet and sour". Whether it was pork or chicken, none of the recipes involved any type of frying, simply crock pot cookery or baking in the oven. Which got me to further thinking, since I had a boneless pork loin roast sitting in the freezer and I usually make pulled pork with that cut of meat. I don't know if I warned you of this before, but my mind tends to be its own game of Trivial Pursuit.

I noticed one recipe, for ingredients, it simply had: boneless, skinless chicken breast cut into pieces, soy sauce, brown sugar;  for preparation it had: place in crock pot on low for 6 hours.  The recipe name was "Hawaiian Chicken Teriyaki" and try as I might, I was just not seeing it; nope, not one second of imagery.  Instead, I pictured "sweet and sour pork" in my mind, what the ingredients were and what it would look like if I did not fry up the pork in a cornstarch coating.

The house smelled amazing as the ingredients cooked away in my crock pot; the final product though was simply out of this world!  Oh, how did I get from "sweet and sour" to "Hawaiian teriyaki" and back to "sweet and sour"?  Yeah, its that Trivial Pursuit thing again.  Anyway, here's the recipe and I'm very sure you are going to lap up your plates so clean, you'll think they were not used at all.

Sweet and Sour Pork Roast

Ingredients:

2 and 1/2 lb boneless pork loin roast

1 large red onion, chopped
1 large red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
1 (20 oz) can pineapple chunks in natural juice; strain juice, but reserve
3 Tbsp flour
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup soy sauce

Preparation:

 

 

Spray a 4 quart crock pot with nonstick cooking spray; place pork roast inside.  Place onion, bell pepper and pineapple over and around roast.

 

 

 

In a small bowl, whisk together reserved pineapple juice, flour, brown sugar and soy sauce until all flour is incorporated.  Pour mixture over roast, fruit and vegetables; cover and cook on low for eight hours.

 

 

 

 

Remove roast from crock pot to serving platter to rest for five minutes; surround with fruit and vegetables.  If serving with rice, substitute half cup of cooking water with sauce from crock pot; cook rice according to directions.

 

Makes 8 servings.

 

 

Now just in case you need to know how to make simple white rice, but this isn't the fluffy variety.  This rice will be moist and almost a "risotto" consistency.

 

Ingredients:

 

4 cups water (or 3 and 1/2 plus 1/2 cup sauce for this dish)

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp ground black pepper

3 Tbsp butter

2 cups long grain rice

 

Preparation:

 

In medium sauce pan, bring water (or water plus sauce), salt, black pepper and butter to a rolling boil.  Add the rice and stir vigorously (helps keep rice from sticking immediately); allow to boil for 15 minutes and stir occasionally to make sure it is not sticking.  Turn off heat, cover and let sit for 20 minutes. 

 

Makes 8 servings.

 

Mary Cokenour