Parfait! Thai-Style Pork Stew

Pork, made in a slow cooker with peppers and onions and spices and… stuff.

Shredded and served with a bountiful bevy of beautiful things – freshly diced carrot, scallion, peanuts, peanut butter, lime wedges, and, mebbe, cilantro – tho’ I tend to use curly parsley.

Yum. This stew (also known, due to an unfortunate phone connection as “Tie Poor Sue“) is one of our favorites; so it was a no-brainer that I’d make it for StewFest!

But.

I’ve made a few changes to the original recipe, and I think you’ll find it is now, truly:

NEW AND IMPROVED!

INGREDIENTS
Stew:
•6 lbs bone-in pork roast
•3 large onions, sliced
•4 or 5 red peppers, cut in strips
•8 garlic cloves, minced
•1 cup teriyaki sauce – I like Mr. Yohida’s
•1 tbsp Shichimi Togarashi (Japanese Seven Spice) – NOT Chinese 5 Spice
•1 tbsp crushed red pepper
•1/2 cup rice or white wine vinegar
•Aleppo pepper (optional)
•3 or 4 scallions – white and light green bits only, save the dark green tops for the toppings
•1 tsp toasted sesame oil

Accompaniments:
•Hot cooked basmati rice – I like yellow rice
•Creamy peanut butter
•Chopped scallion tops
•Dry-roasted peanuts
•Diced carrot
•Lime wedges
•Fresh parsley or cilantro

First off, two things:

1: The featured pic is not from StewFest!, but is how I normally serve this dish: on a large platter with rice and mebbe a nice side of Green Beans Mandarin.

2: As I hinted (ermmm, kinda strongly) above, Shichimi Togarashi is NOT Chinese 5 Spice; there’s no Star Anise in it for one thing – which makes Shichimi T. far superior in my opinion. I buy mine from The Spice House in Milwaukee, but if you’d like, you can try making your own.

All-righty then! Let’s Thai some stew!

Roughly cut your pork into large chunks and toss into your slow cooker. Feel free to trim any large chunks of fat off if you like, but I deal with that later, so don’t worry about it if you don’t.

I prefer a bone-in pork roast for this, because I believe the bones add a lot of extra flavor, but boneless pork roast, and even thick-cut chops will work as well.

Top the pork with the sliced onion, peppers, and garlic, then sprinkle the Shichimi T. and the crushed red peppers over all.

Stir together the rice vinegar and the teriyaki sauce and pour over all.

Slap the cover on your cooker, set the heat to low, and let it cook for 4 or 5 hours. I’ve noted before that the original recipe, from Cooking Light in 1999, says to cook this on low for 8 hours. If I try that with MY new-ish slow cooker, I get some slightly singed stuff, and my sister (who knows all) has had the same issue with her (also newer) slow cooker; so take your own cooker’s cooking history into account for timing.

Here’s the kinda fussy part where I deal with all that fat I didn’t really bother with earlier:

After cooking, remove the pork and veggies from the cooker and place in separate containers; then strain the cooking liquid into a large bowl or container. Cover them all and stash ’em in the fridge overnight.

A few hours before you’re ready to serve, pull the containers out of the fridge, then pick over the pork, removing any bones and extra fatty bits, shred it, and pop it into your cleaned out slow cooker. Top with the cooked veggies.

Pull the cooking liquid out of the fridge and get rid of that layer of fatty badness on the top. Pour the remaining liquid through a strainer over the pork and veggies in the cooker, and add the white and light-green bits of scallion, the toasted sesame oil, and a nice bit of Aleppo pepper (if you don’t happen to keep this nice little spice in your pantry, you can substitute a combination of 4 parts sweet paprika and 1 part cayenne).

Heat through, and serve as you will.

The recipe originally called for stirring in 1 cup of peanut butter near the end, but I left it out because we had some folk with nut issues at StewFest!, and I didn’t want them to feel slighted. I actually prefer the stew this way – with the peanut butter offered as just another condiment to stir into your own bowl of stew, or not. Rich really liked the original, but has now been converted to this option.