In my last post, I showed you how to make "smoke" pork in the slow cooker. So now that you have all of this shredded pork, what do you do with it? I gave you some ideas in my previous post like serving with mashed potatoes and gravy (our favorite!) and mixing with BBQ sauce and serving on buns. Here is another way I use shredded pork. My husband takes soup to work and so I try to have a good variety of soups to make. I have made this one a lot without a recipe, but I did figure out a recipe this time to share with you all!
Spicy Pork Soup
2 cups shredded and cooked pork
2 cups Recipe Ready Celery, Carrots and
Onions
1/2 green pepper, chopped
1 TB Vegetable oil
8 oz uncooked pasta
1 cup water
2 cans chicken broth
2 small cans of tomato sauce
2 TB tomato paste
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp paprika
1/8-1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (adjust to taste)
1/4 tsp crushed red pepper (adjust to taste)
1/4 tsp black pepper
Cook pasta in separate pot of salted
water. Drain and set aside.
In another large pot, over medium high, sauté
all vegetables in 1 TB oil for about 2-3 minutes until they start to soften.
Add water, broth, tomato sauce, tomato paste, and all spices. Reduce heat to
medium and let simmer for about 10 minutes to let flavors develop. Add pork and pasta, stir. Enjoy!
Just a side note: I cook the pasta separately to keep it from overcooking too much. I didn't include all of this in directions, but when I make this for his lunches, I make it ahead of time and he reheats it. Sometimes, when I cooked the pasta in the broth, they would be HUGE later and overcooked. So now I try to cook it separately, drain it and rinse it cold water to stop the cooking process. Then add the pasta once the broth has cooled down some, then place it in the fridge. This keeps them from cooking too much and getting too big. You could put the pasta in with the broth and water and cook them there and then add all of the other ingredients if you wanted to save a pot.
Also, this is the first time I've used the Recipe Ready, pre-chopped and frozen vegetables. I found them really cheap and needed to use them up. Usually I just chop up some onions, carrots and green peppers. This did save a lot of time though!
