Rubber Pork

I'm sure a lot of you have heard of the term "Rubber Chicken", and I don't mean the toy, but the food. Usually when people use that term, they mean to say they have got 3-4 meals out of one chicken. I did this with pork this week and it was awesome.

I was able to get a HUGE 6lb Pork roast for around $5.50 this past week and froze it until I was ready to cook it. Normally I defrost over night by leaving it out in the sink, or in the fridge or something. Wednesday morning I realized I had forgotten to take it out, oops! I thought I would just put it in the crock pot anyway, and just dumped it in there, on low all day (the last couple hours, I did put it on high). I did mix up one packet of onion soup mix with a cup and a half of water and poured it over the roast, so there was a bit of moisture in there. Around 4, I added some garlic salt and freshly ground pepper. We ate about 6 or so and had the most tender pork roast I have ever had. Just the right amount of flavor too, and it was just falling apart. We had mashed potatoes, gravy and peas with it as well.

After we were done eating, I took the remainder of the pork roast and took a large serving fork and a dinner fork, and "shredded" or "pulled" the pork. It's a good idea to do this while the meat is hot, otherwise it won't shred as easily. Into a bowl it went and in the fridge till Thursday. Don't make the pieces too large, you'll want to shred it as much as possible so that when you do the bbq sauce the next day, it will absorb the flavor more easily.

Thursday afternoon I took the pulled pork and again, dumped it into the crock pot. I also added a bottle (regular size, not huge) of KC Masterpiece BBQ sauce, and once the bbq sauce was empty, filled it with water and also added that. It's important to add the water, because otherwise the sauce is too thick. It cooked on low for a few hours, and then we had a wonderful meal of pulled bbq pork on fresh Kaiser rolls. Yummy!!! We had that again Friday night before we went out for Halloween. There was enough pork to feed us for 3 nights. Now that is definitely Rubber Pork! lol

I always feel a great sense of accomplishment when I can feed us more than once on one meal. I know a lot of people wouldn't even bother to do this, but I like to do it to save money. If you are creative, you could use the pork for other recipes too. In that case, I would do the pulled pork last, unless you separate the left overs into two-one for each night. When I do this with chicken, I make Roast chicken one night, Soup one night and soup the next. I suppose with a chicken though, you could do the roast chicken one night. Then the next night, pull meat off the bones and set that aside, and then make a soup with the carcass and some of the saved meat. Next night make pulled chicken or a pot pie. I guess it depends on how much extra meat you have. For a soup and pot pie, you don't need a ton of meat-the pot pie recipe I made only called for one or two cups of chopped chicken.

All you need is a big hunk of meat and a little creativity, and you've fed your family for 3 or 4 days!