Whenever I see someone cook Southern Food on TV I usually think two things: “Omg! All that fat, sugar and butter! and it’s all deep fried!”, followed by “that looks really good. Deep frying does make everything better!”. To bring out my latent Southern girl I made one of my favourite meals: pulled barbeque pork accompanied by cornbread and coleslaw.
Cornbread is one of the easiest things to make. You can put it together in five minutes and after half an hour in the oven you look like a genius. In the bowl above there is cornmeal, flour, salt and baking powder.
Since cheese makes everything better I grated a generous amount of marbled cheddar.
One of the nicest things about cornbread is that there is no butter to cut into the dry ingredients, you just melt it and mix it in a bowl with milk and eggs.
Everything getting mixed together. I decided to add in some ground pepper at this point.
And of course, one must never miss an opportunity to add more cheese to one’s life so at The Husband’s request I added some more cheddar on top.
When I took it out of the oven the smell was amazing.
I cut a little piece for “quality control purposes”, as I call it. Yum. There is nothing better than warm cornbread from the oven. It is very comforting food. At this point I had to stop myself from just sitting down and having cornbread for dinner and went to finish preparing the rest of my meal.
Ok. This is quite possibly the most unappetizing picture that I have ever posted on my blog. This is my way making a faster and less greasy pulled pork. Most pulled pork recipes involve taking a really fatty piece of meat like pork shoulder or pork butt, cooking it for hours and then separating the meat from the fat. While the meat tastes great with this method it is also a pile of grease. To avoid the mess and to make life easier I simmer pork tenderloins in broth for 30-40 minutes until they are cooked then take them out and let them cool.
Once the pork loins have cooled enough to handle I take the meat and shred it. You can literally just pull it apart with your fingers into long strands. Voila! The texture of pulled pork without the incredible mess.
Next up I add the pork to the pan with onions that I had sautéed beforehand along with several very generous glugs of my favourite barbeque sauce as well as some onion powder, garlic powder, chili powder, a bit of paprika and salt and pepper. I let this cook on low heat as I prepared the coleslaw. This actually tastes better the longer that leave it on the stove but I was in a hurry that day so it didn’t sit there for that long.
Coleslaw is one of the easiest things to make especially since they sell shredded cabbage mix in the supermarket. Some people like to blanch their cabbage but I like it raw. I always use mayo, Dijon mustard (this time I happened to have jalapeno mustard in the fridge so I used that), apple cider vinegar and some buttermilk. I also add in lots of celery pepper to taste. Super easy and really good although it is best on the day that it is made if you’re like me and like the slight crunch of raw cabbage.
This is one of my favourite meal combos ever. I love the spicy, saucy pork, the crunch of the tangy coleslaw and the warm cheesy cornbread. I have to watch myself around cornbread because I could easily inhale several pieces because it is that good. Eventually I want to buy a cast iron skillet to make more authentic cornbread.
