We Eat Toronto Goes Southern US

I actually followed up on vague weekend plans and made some slow cooker pulled pork. I went to the Internet for help and ended up using a Canadian Living Recipe. But thanks to the Crockpot Lady for inspiration!

Procurement of the pork shoulder proved to be difficult in Toronto, although as the KP commented in the previous post, it seems pork shoulder procurement in Sarnia is far easier.

No luck at the No Frills, so I walked over to St. Lawrence market. Even there, I did not see anything labelled as pork shoulder. I asked a couple meat vendors and not much help. Finally, I saw a $2/lb item marked as "pork roast". I bought the smallest one I could find ($6 all together) and came home. I figured worst case scenario would be sliced bbq flavored pork roast item?

The second real dilemma proved to be dealing with the thick layer of fat surrounding the meat. The Canadian Living recipe did not provide much guidance here, so I got out a couple of knives and tried to de-fat the thing. After 5 min and 1/10 done, I packed it in and went onto the searing step. I am sure the fat would make things yummier, but I thought some incremental tastiness is probably not worth a heart attack and/or chubbiness.

Fat removal proved to be much, much easier after searing the meat. After brewing up the tomato sauce, it was crockpot time.


Cooking time was about 8 hours on low. In the end, I did appear to have actually purchased "pork shoulder" because the meat pulled apart beautifully! Note to self - all pork roasts are actually shoulders!

In the meantime, I further boiled down the sauce, adjusted the seasonings (ok I admit to dumping in most of a bottle of purchased bbq sauce and a good amount of chipotles in adobo sauce) and added the pulled pork back in.

I don't think I would go with the Canadian Living recipe next time - tomato paste & sauce was probably overkill and not enough "other" stuff to overcome tomato flavor.

We ate the pork in a sandwich with Ian's home-made whole wheat honey bread, collard greens and corn for a Southern influenced meal.




Anyone want to come over for leftovers? Seriously...we have a lot of leftovers! Pulled pork sandwiches round 2 and tacos are coming up! Awesome value for about ~$8 for pork + sauce items.