Caribbean Pulled Pork with Mango Slaw

Things are moving right along with my new food-shop-to-be, and my days are insane. There are a million moving parts, and keeping all the plates spinning is crucial. I’m ordering supplies, scheduling painters, plumbers, and electricians, plus organizing, planning, getting recipes together, trying to remember what my accountant told me, praying the wifi gets hooked up this century–yesterday I thought my brain was going to short out. (And there we have a mixed metaphor jammed up against the run-on sentence from hell, but that’s me all over right now.)

We are opening the day after Labor Day, no matter what.

Until then, we need to keep up our strength. Here’s one way we’ll be doing that this week: eating Caribbean Pulled Pork and Mango Slaw. In addition to being silly easy and utterly delicious, it’s versatile. First thing in the morning you just throw the meat and a couple of other things in the slow cooker, and walk away for the rest of the day. At dinnertime, it takes about 15 minutes to get it all on the table. Depending on your preference or your audience, you can arrange the pork and slaw on a plate not touching, and have it that way. (If going the plate route, I like to add a fairly plain potato salad.) Or you can put the mango slaw in a bowl, top it with the saucy meat, and eat it with a fork. Or a spoon. Or chopsticks. You can wrap the pork and slaw in a tortilla, and have an entire square meal you can hold in one hand–beware of drips. Me? I am expecting to pile it all on a bun, and take it with me back to work. There, I’ll take two bites and set it down someplace I won’t remember. I’ll find it again twenty minutes later, and have another bite. Between phone calls, texts, cleaning, and sorting, I’ll take quick bites here and there. When I finally leave for the day, I’ll discover the chips I’d packed but left in the car, and I’ll eat those on the way home.

And the extra pulled pork freezes great!

Caribbean Pulled Pork
4-5 lb. pork butt
2 or 3 T. dried jerk seasoning
1 medium onion, diced
1 cup cola
1 T. Worcestershire sauce
1 cup BBQ sauce (I used Sweet Baby Ray’s)
2 T. cornstarch stirred into 2 T. cold water

Trim the thickest fat from the butt, and cut the meat into chunks if needed to fit into your slow cooker. Spray the crock with cooking spray.

Toss the meat with the jerk seasoning. Add to the cooker with the onion, and pour the cola over everything. Cook on low for 8 hours.

Using a slotted spoon, remove the meat to a cutting board and shred. Discard about half the liquid left in the cooker. Return the meat to the slow cooker and add the BBQ sauce and the cornstarch slurry. Turn the cooker to high and cook until heated through and the sauce is slightly thickened. Serve with your favorite hot sauce.

Mango Slaw
⅓ cup oil
Zest and juice of 2 limes
1 t. honey
¼ t. pepper flakes
1 16 oz. bag of slaw mix (or 4 cups finely shredded cabbage)
½ bunch cilantro, chopped
2 or 3 scallions, green part, thinly sliced
1 mango, peeled and cut into thin strips
Pinch of salt

Put the first 4 ingredients in a jar with a tight-fitting lid. Combine the rest of the ingredients in a large bowl and toss. Shake the dressing well and pour over the slaw. Toss again. Add salt to taste.

Note: I went to the grocery store to pick up some dry jerk seasoning. They were out! So I found a recipe and threw together my own. Store extra in an airtight container for next time.

Dry Jerk Seasoning Blend
1 tablespoon onion powder
1 tablespoon garlic powder
2 teaspoons cayenne pepper
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons ground black pepper
2 teaspoons dried thyme (or use 1 teaspoon ground thyme)
2 teaspoons sugar (or use brown sugar)
1 teaspoon ground allspice
1 teaspoon dried parsley
1 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon hot pepper flakes
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground clove
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin