The barbecue grill is tucked away for the winter and the slow cooker is back in the kitchen. I even found a place for it other than permanently on the kitchen counter.
Remember when I complained about not being able to order dinners delivered? The slow cooker is as close as I will get to not cooking dinner – I can do it at lunch….
We get amazingly good sauerkraut here. I get it at the deli-counter and I can get it either raw or cooked.
Both are good.
When I lived in the U.S. sauerkraut came in a green can and required rinsing in order for it to be edible.
It required a lot of rinsing….. It was very, very sour and salty.
What I buy here is great as is, but can also be added to a recipe without overpowering the rest of the ingredients. I normally add, at a minimum, white wine and juniper berries, and usually a bit of chicken or beef stock as well.
So….. taste your kraut and rinse or not, depending on taste.
Slow Cooker Pork and Sauerkraut
Total time: 8 hours
Ingredients:
- 16oz (500gr) pork loin, cut into pieces
- 16oz (500gr) sauerkraut
- 1 onion, chopped
- 2 carrots, roughly chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 tsp smokey paprika
- 1/3 cup (3oz, 90ml) chicken stock
- 1/3 cup (4oz, 90ml) white wine
- 1 tsp juniper berries
Instructions:
- Layer the ingredients in the slow cooker as follows: onions, carrots, garlic, kraut, juniper berries, pork.
- Whisk paprika, broth, wine and pour over the top.
- Cook on low for 8 hours – stir once if you like.
- Spoon onto a platter and serve.
Every time I think I’m making progress with my French I have an encounter that leaves me speechless.
Literally.
Without words.
It happened again yesterday.
I was out working with the dogs when a truck pulled up at the end of our lane.
An old, toothless, farmer got out and started talking to me.
After a few minutes of me nodding and him talking he walked off into one of the fields.
I had no clue as to what he was talking about.
I might have understood him better if he’d had teeth, but that’s neither here nor there.
The fact remains I was mystified. Or would that be stupefied….
Okay, it wasn’t quite that bad.
I knew he was looking for something; I knew he wanted me to look for something and I knew that it had something to do with hunting.
He had asked if the land was private. I assumed he wanted to check for game trails and was asking for permission to hunt.
He wandered about for 20 minutes or so, then came back to talk to me some more – repeating the same story (I think).
He asked me to watch for something and gave me his number to call him if I saw anything. That’s when I realized I might not have the conversation quite right.
The problem (once I got the actual story from my neighbor) was that I was not differentiating between vous (the formal word for you, properly used with strangers – and he was strange) vu (past participle of the verb ‘to see’) and veau (the word for baby cow or calf).
Yes, I know they sound different to the French ear – and even to my ear when pronounced distinctly…. Maybe if he had teeth it would have been more clear.
Anyway, the story is this: He had left the gate to his pasture open and one of his young calves had wondered off. He’d been looking for it all morning and wanted to know if I’d seen it. He was worried that, because it was small and brown, a hunter might mistake it for a deer. Plus, of course, he just wanted to find it and get it back to the farm. Could I please call him if I saw it.
Well…. At least I said all the right things to him, even if I thought I was answering different questions than he was asking.
No, we have not seen the calf – nor the farmer again, so I assume the calf found it’s way home, with or without help.
Or another local farmer has a new addition to his herd…..
I love the slow cooker.. I love sauerkruat and I love pork. This is perfect for ,me 🙂 Though I have to use the green can of sauerkraut
I grew up eating canned “SilverFloss” sauerkraut. We had pork with sauerkraut and a side of mashed potatoes. I loved Sauerkraut. I love that salty, briney, sour combo. We never drained the sauerkraut; just learned to handle the “pucker”. As an adult I learned to buy the refrigerated kraut and then add some brown sugar and caraway seeds before I added the pork/kielbasa. I still eat kraut with mashed potatoes. I love pork, sauerkraut and mashed potatoes so much I have named it a “Mammy(my maternal granny’s moniker) Meal”. NOTHING is better then a “Mammy Meal”
I can imagine finding sauerkraut and juniper berries here en Maroc would be nigh on impossible !!!
Yummy dish Katie. It looks like you have great success with your slow cooker…I must give mine another try and this recipe would be a great start. We have wonderful sauerkraut but might be a bit on the salty side so will rinse mine. On another note, a few years back I made a recipe of yours that was cannelloni stuffed with leeks and squash from your previous kitchen blog. Do you recall it? I would love to make it again – I did a post back then to make it gluten free with a link back to you, but now the link does not show up. Any chance you could maybe re post the recipe…or send it to me? It was delicious! Many thanks, Ina
We make our own sauerkraut. Much tastier and less salty than the commercial stuff. Just have to make sure it’s not made in the house because everyone who passes by will know you’re making sauerkraut! 😉 I drain and then saute mine in a bit of butter, a lot of thinly sliced onions, diced potatoes. pepper and a bit of brown sugar. Lovely stuff. Mellows nicely. I plop my browned pork chops (previously browned in the pan before sauteeing the kraut) in the slow cooker and top with the kraut mixture. Yummy!
Poor little calf. Hope he got home okay!
Timothy, I ate a lot of kraut out of the green can 😉
Robbie, my favorite (from my mother) is with macaroni, cooked, then finished with browned butter. My mother loved browned butter and put it on everything. I still love it with kraut. (or without)
Kate, I actually don’t remember seeing cabbages…. a northern European staple.
Ian, I don’t think that was me…. I don’t make cannelloni. We can’t get the big cannelloni pasta here, and I haven’t been making pasta from scratch in a long time. Sounds good though…..
nightsmusic, I should try to make my own – but probably won’t lol. It’s so good and so cheap at the markets. I buy more than enough for the 2 of us for under a dollar. I have no idea if he found the calf or not…. probably, as we never saw the farmer again.