Rhinoceros Sandwiches

The first time I made this for someone else, it was a family including three young kids.  I couldn’t find a boneless pork shoulder at the grocery, and when their dad saw me pull a long, pointy bone out of the crock pot at the end of the day, we started calling them Rhinoceros Sandwiches. Everyone since has agreed that this new name makes them better.  Somehow.

We start with a lesson in grocery shopping.  When I visited the third grocery store of the day (the other two both lacked what I felt are fairly obvious, common items, thus earning them my lasting enmity) and finally found pork shoulders (boneless, a bonus), I reached for the one that was 2.54 pounds, almost exactly what the recipe specified.  Then I saw a second one, right beside the first, whose identification was identical, but weighed a little over three pounds, and had a lower price.  It wasn’t older, it wasn’t green and fuzzy--it was just somehow mislabeled.  I don’t question these things, but I also won’t hesitate to take advantage of them.  I bought the bigger shoulder.

At the first grocery, I had bought an onion, but when I returned to the kitchen, I remembered we had some leftover red onion from some braised short ribs the Chief Taster had made.  At the time, I had told her that use of the remaining red onion was on her, because I was traumatized shortly after college by a pasta salad someone had made containing so much red onion--cut into very large chunks--that a cloud of red onion vapor hovered resolute over the bowl, bringing tears to the eyes of all who passed.  It should have been rechristened Red Onion Salad, but I digress.

Braised short ribs.  Not our topic today, but still tasty.

I decided that barbecue was a good use for red onion--the strong flavor actually works in that setting.  But I chopped it really small.

Not all of the red onion was harmed in the making of this meal.  Nor were any actual rhinoceroses.

I always take liberties with seasoning.  I like strong flavors.  Betty calls for a tablespoon of jerk seasoning and ¼ teaspoon of thyme.  Poppycock.  I shook Jamaican Jerk seasoning all over one side of the shoulder (after trimming away a lot of fat.  I know some people say that fat adds flavor, but I think fat just adds fat.  Jerk seasoning--that adds flavor.) and rubbed it in well.  Then I tossed on some thyme and rubbed that in, too.  Drop it in the crock pot, tasty side down, and repeat on the exposed surface.  I’m not saying you should dump in an entire jar; there is a limit to how much is right, but I put that limit somewhere well above a tablespoon for this much pork.

protip: rub in seasonings with one hand, keeping the other clean  to work the sink, open jars, etc.

Es la cola de Mexico.

Slow cooker recipes usually call for some amount of liquid, especially if all you’re really doing is cooking a big slab of meat.  In this case, the liquid is “cola.”  Use whatever regionalism you find most appropriate, but use something dark.  I lucked out at the second grocery and found Mexican soda.  They make it with real sugar down there, and there’s a difference.  I don’t know if it’s a difference you can taste in the pork, but I was excited to try it.  As I poured it in, I suddenly wished I had some rum.  Rum goes with Coke.  Rum is from Jamaica.  Using rum with Coke in a Jamaican Jerk Sandwich recipe seems like an obvious choice to me.  Sadly, we have no rum.

Finally, a little dash or three of hot sauce.  I remembered to add it about an hour after I started the pot cooking, so I think most of the heat will cook out and it should still leave some good flavor behind.  Individual sandwiches can easily be re-dosed.

After cooking, before shredding.

After ten hours in the Crock Pot, shredding the pork was a formality. I used a big slotted spoon to lift it out of the crock and into a large mixing bowl. I think that contains things a little better than the plate Betty suggests. I scooped as much of the onion as I could into the meat bowl, and poured the rest of the juices into a smaller bowl. Betty says you can reheat this for sandwich-dipping purposes, but really--who dips a barbecue sandwich? These bad boys are such a mess on their own you really don't need to dip them in anything, but you might want to eat over a plastic sheet if you are prone, as I am, to grossly overestimating the bun's capacity. I set aside those juices and pretty much forgot about them until it was time to do the dishes. Using two forks, I pulled apart the pork in the bowl, occasionally fishing out a big chunk of fat to discard. There was also a chunk of bone about the size of a golf ball. Throw that out, too. All the meat goes back in the crock with the barbecue sauce and 1/2 C of the juices in that forgotten bowl. If you think ahead a little further than I did, you'll realize that the amount of barbecuse sauce called for in the recipe is roughly a full bottle, and you can use that 1/2 C of juices to rinse out the bottle into the crock, to make sure you get it all. I forgot. My loss is your gain, kitchen cousins.

I didn't get pictures of the final product because by that point, I had run six miles, the entire apartment smelled like meat, and I was ravenous. Betty can show you the final product, in Betty's idealized world (link for the recipe is above). Everyone who had the pork that week, including the four-day-old leftovers Saturday night, returned good reviews. I was a little disappointed that I couldn't detect any hint of the hot sauce. Next time, I think I'll add that at the end, with the barbecue sauce. Hopefully we'll have some rum by then.