Instant Pot Cooking With Woof & Sqrlmog: Roast Pork

[xyzzysqrl]

We did this, except:

No onions, just carrots. Four big ones, peeled, but we didn't chop them.
Three cloves of garlic, peeled ... as best we could by hand? I'm sure there's a trick to this. I don't know what it is.
1 cup chicken broth, 1 cup apple juice.

What worked: The pork came out chewy, but completely cooked inside and out. It tasted good, too. The carrots had a lingering sweetness from both the carroty... carrotness and the apple juice.

What didn't: The carrots were nearly ATOMIZED by cooking right next to the roast for all that time, so soft they were dissolving. Didn't really taste the garlic or garlic powder. Or much of the apple juice for that matter. Maybe more liquid next time? Roast was slightly mushy, could've used oven time to crisp it up some.

Verdict: Yeah this was food. This was pretty good actually, for a first-time thing where I deliberately found the simplest recipe I could and read the steps off my phone while we were cooking.

Woof: "I wouldn't serve this to Gordon Ramsey or anything, but this tastes good."
Sqrlmog: "I forgot how CHEWY pork is. I'm pretty sure that's on purpose. Also, did I really get ALL the skin off the garlic? I'm still worried."

We had a good bit of liquid left over, maybe we'll strain it into a thermos and try... I dunno, pouring it into chili? What do you do with leftover, uh... cooking ... fluid ... if you're not gonna make a gravy right there?

Woof: "If we do put this in the fridge, I'm laying increasing odds every day that you'll absent-mindedly root around in there, pop the thermos open and drink the contents without thinking about it."
Sqrlmog: "...no, that's ... that's fair. That would... that might happen. I can't deny that."

Anyway.

EDIBLE FOOD WAS MADE.

Comments

[chalcedony_starlings]

Hooray! ^..^

Edited to add: Also, drinking the juice sounds… legit? Like, unconventional maybe but I don't know of any reason you wouldn't?

[penguinmayhem]

The trick to peeling garlic is to cut off the ends and then get your hands covered in garlic sweat and get super fucking pissed off because it just won't fucking peel oh my god just come off you little shit


You can always use the fluid as pork stock for something else later but that depends on you actually needing pork stock for something and you can't really refrigerate it for more than like a week.

[kjorteo]

https://lifehacker.com/how-to-peel-a-head-of-garlic-in-10-seconds-with-two-bow-5844865 ?

[penguinmayhem]

What in the heck is this? Do garlic cloves not come with individual skins in America or what? I can safely say that I've never seen garlic like that in my entire life.

[moxie_man]

There are reasons they sell prepeeled garlic in jars for an arm and a leg. It is near on impossible to peel it on your own. One trick I've seen work for some people, but have not been able to get to work for me required you to try and peal the whole bulb at once. Break it up into the individual buds. Snip the bottoms off. Toss into a tupperware-type dish with lid (or even a clean, empty margarine tub with lid. Cover tightly and shake like hell for a few minutes and let them friction their skins off each other.

Pork juice: Assuming you didn't trim the fat off the roast pre-insta-pot, when you chill it you'll get a layer of fat to form at the top, which I'd advise skimming off before using the stock in something else like soup or chili. As others have advised, you need to use this in a few days or pour into ziplock bags and freeze to use later. Be sure to label the bag first with what's in it and a date, so that 3 months down the road when you come across the bag in the freezer you'll know what's in it.