Saturday Recipe Share: Sunday Dinner Pork Roast

How is your Saturday? Mine has been busy with errands: buying groceries, shopping for a birthday present, and picking up some wine at our favorite wine store.

Once at home, hubby put away the food while I made a big pot of chili since Darling Hubby wanted hotdogs for dinner tonight.

Time To Unwind

While the chili cooked, we took a glass of wine (Skinny Girl California Red) over to the lake and sat on one of the park benches.

Sipping the wine, watching the ducks gliding across the lake, feeling the slight breeze caressing our

faces, and hearing doves cooing in the trees was sheer pleasure. I could feel the stress melting away.

I decided to carry forward that stress-free, mellowed-out feeling by putting Sunday dinner on tonight. So I set my trusty Crock Pot on the counter. The recipe I'm using takes 10 to 12 hours to cook. I'll get all the ingredients together, but I won't actually put the slow cooker on until later this evening.

So, you can do that too, and have dinner ready tomorrow between 11:00 and noon. Look the recipe over and go to the store for anything you might not have.

Sunday Dinner Pork Roast with Sweet Potatoes

• 3 to 4-pound pork loin roast, trimmed, with some fat left to flavor the meat & vegetables
• Kitchen Bouquet™ 
• Garlic Powder
• Salt and Black Pepper
• 3 to 4 pounds of sweet potatoes, peeled & cut in large chunks
• 1 medium onion, sliced thin

Instructions

• Brush the pork roast with Kitchen Bouquet. If you've never used Kitchen Bouquet before, it's a seasoning and browning agent made from caramelized vegetable flavorings. It's been produced since 1873. It's intense so you never used it straight from the bottle as a sauce. Instead, you season soups, stews, and gravies with it, or you coat meat with it prior to cooking. It's less than $3.00 for a 4 ounce bottle.
• Sprinkle the roast liberally with the garlic, salt, and pepper.
• Prepare cooking surface of your slow cooker by spraying with Pam or lining it with a plastic bag made for slow cookers.
• Place the sweet potato chunks in the bottom of your slow cooker.
• Arrange the onion slices over the potatoes.
• Place pork roast on top of onions.
• Cover with the slow cooker lid.
• Cook on low 10 to 12 hours. (I'm putting this on to cook around 11 tonight, just before I go to bed. Tomorrow after church, I'll come home and put the finishing touches on this dish.

Finishing Touches

• Turn slow cooker off. Remove roast to a large serving platter. Let it rest for 10-20 minutes before slicing.
• Remove vegetables to an oven-proof bowl and place in the oven set on warm.
• Pour the drippings into a small to medium-size saucepan and heat to simmering.
• Make a slurry--a mixture of equal parts of a thickener and cold liquid. The thickener can be plain white flour, arrowroot, or constarch. The cold liquid can be water, broth, or white wine. The liquid must be cold.
• If you have a lot of drippings, use 2 tablespoons thickener and 2 tablespoons cold liquid. Place in a measuring cup and stir well to make sure all the thickener is dissolved.
• Stir the slurry into the simmering drippings. Keep stirring it's thickened. It takes a few minutes. You know it’s thickened, and the thickening agent is cooked when the mixture is not only thicker but kind of glossy looking. Taste and adjust seasoning if necessary.
• Drizzle gravy over the sliced roast and serve the rest in a gravy boat or bowl. 

There you have your Sunday dinner that's large enough and tasty enough for a family gathering. Add a large tossed salad, a fresh fruit medley, and bread of your choice, and you have a great meal. Oh, and by the way, Skinny Girl California Red goes nicely with this. So does a chilled Chenin Blanc.

Takeaway Truth

If you're lucky, you'll have leftovers! Have a wonderful weekend.