My grocery store is Shop Rite, and their sales start on Sundays. I made a special trek there yesterday morning to take advantage of a sale on pork loin. A 99-cents-a-pound deal? I'm there!
To my surprise, these were whole pork loins instead of remnants, monstrosities of many pounds. I figured I could cut one up and use it for several meals. And that's exactly what I did with my $13 hunk of meat. I slow cooked a pound worth of it (more on that later) and cut the rest into 3 roasts.
With the pork loin on Sunday, plus a sale on ground turkey for which I grabbed 5 packages costing less than $2 each, my freezer is now full! These finds join about 6 packages of meatballs, boneless chicken breast, other assorted chicken parts, turkey and chicken burgers, assorted veggies and tater tots, and pita bread for pizzas. Freezer bags are my friends--I generally take the ground meat and burgers out of the pillow packs. I also buy large packages of chicken quarters when they're on sale, cut them into the separate drumsticks and thighs myself, and freeze them in bags.
So for pork hunk #1: I trimmed the visible fat off of it and did a mock rotisserie in my slow cooker. I first learned about this method from the Weight Watchers message boards, for chicken. Basically you spray your slow cooker all around with cooking spray, then set foil coils in the slow cooker for the meat to sit on. Season the meat with spices, then spray with cooking spray. Set it on the coils and cook on high for 4-6 hours, depending on how big the piece of meat is.
I wanted to make a Latin-spiced pork loin, so I added salt, pepper, garlic and cumin. Once the meat was finished, I got it in my mind to make a Latin pork fried rice. That experiment went well!
