Ever since I got a cast iron dutch oven with my birthday money last year, I've been amazed at all the wonderful recipes I keep finding to use it with. And I haven't used hardly any of my other kitchen cookware since the day I got it either- even my slow cooker can't hold a candle to the way it cooks meat into a tender delight. I haven't figured out exactly why it cooks so well, but I have a hunch it could be the weight of the heavy cast iron lid that seals it off and keeps the moisture inside. Or, maybe not, but I know for a fact Hubby has never bragged on the roasts I've cooked in the past like he has lately. And the best part, especially for someone like me who has to budget our groceries down to the penny every week, is that you can actually buy the cheaper cuts of meat and have them turn out just as tender and flavorful as the expensive (and smaller) cuts.
A couple of weeks ago I was in the grocery store checking out the marked-down items in the meat department, and I came across a rather large bone-in pork roast for a great price. I immediately thought of how much Hubby loves pork barbeque sandwiches and wondered how it would cook up in the dutch oven. So, I picked up the roast and a bottle of my favorite sauce and headed home. That weekend I made it for the first time, and it was delicious! So much so, I had a special request from Hubby for it again this week. If you have a dutch oven, you'll definitely want to try this- your pork roast will turn out so tender you won't believe it!
I started out by mixing up just a small amount of my favorite sauce (about 4 ounces) with some water....
Enough water to partially cover the roast. (This was a large roast, so it took about 2 1/2 to 3 cups of liquid.)
Into the oven for about 3-4 hours at 300 degrees, then the last hour or so I turned up the heat to 350 to melt away any remaining fat still on the roast. (I didn't trim any fat before putting it in the dutch oven- the cooking process does that for you.)
Total cooking time for this roast (which was almost 4 lbs.) was about 4 1/2 hours- you can allow less time for a smaller roast. (You definitely don't want to overcook it!)
As you can tell from this picture, it literally forks apart!
I added the rest of the sauce and mixed it into the meat with my hands while also pulling the meat apart into smaller pieces and...
Ta-da!
Add that with some baked beans and sweet corn from last years' garden, and all that's left to do now is eat.
Happy cooking, everybody!
