Fighting With My Crock Pot

Last week I wanted to make pulled pork. I got this beautiful piece of pork shoulder at the store and I knew it was going to make the most succulent pulled pork sandwiches--enough to feed a crowd. I figured this would be the perfect time to use my crock pot, which I hadn't used in at lead two years... at least.

I was feeling bad about this nonuse of the crock pot, especially after my friend Elise told me about how much she loved cooking in her crock pot. So in the back of my mind I was thinking, Elise will be so proud of me for using the crock pot! I gathered my recipe and began filling my pot with the pork.

Thus began my journey to discovering I am crock pot idiot.

From the start, I overloaded the crock pot, but since I was able to close the lid, I thought it would be okay. That was my first mistake. I started to feel funny about the crock pot thing from the beginning because there was no light on mine; if there is no light how do I really know if it's on? So I first turned the sucker on and kept feeling it to make sure it was hot. It was. Then  I was thinking to myself, what temperature is low and what temperature is high? So that was sort of nagging at me.

As I set the crock pot to low and placed the lid on, I googled the temperatures correlated to the crock pot. I didn't find a clear answer because, depending on what you are cooking in it, that can vary. Then I kept starring at it thinking about why the meat still looked kind of raw two hours in. Then I decided the best thing to do was to walk away and let the crock pot do it's thing.

A couple hours later I came back to check it. Oh it was cooking all right... but my overload had finally caught up with me and the sauce for the pulled pork was leaking its way out of the top of the pot and onto my counter. Thank goodness I caught it in time. That was when I pulled the plug.

I took the pork and the sauce and loaded it into my enameled dutch oven and I threw it in the oven on 250 degrees for a couple more hours. It came out beautifully! I guess I am just more comfortable with ovens and cast iron than I am with set it and forget it.... but the next morning when I woke up, I decided to call a truce with the crock pot.

I shredded the pork and I returned it to the crock pot, leaving PLENTY of room at the top. I set it to low at about 9am, and by lunch time my pulled pork was hot and bun ready! So I suppose I have found a use for my crock pot after all, and maybe we will work on our relationship from here. After all, it did help me out in the end! 

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