Oh dear crock pot...how I have missed you so! With cold weather seemingly here to stay in Northern Wisconsin, I decided to pull out our crock pot this past weekend for a nice autumnal, German dinner. You know the type of Sunday dinner; get the meal going early in the morning, let the food simmer on low throughout the day, fill the house up with lovely smells, and then sit down for a nice, family meal at the end of the day. It's a Wisconsin tradition...and it's been a staple of cooking meals in my family forever.
What's the meal, you might ask? Well, if you must know, it's a pork sirloin roast dinner drenched in sauerkraut. I have some German in me...so yes, it's a thing over in these parts. This meal is easy, my wife let's me do it without fear of me screwing anything up, and it tastes wonderful.
Our meat CSA didn't provide pork sirloin the last go around, so I drove to the local food co-op to pick up about 2.5 pounds of naturally raised pork. I then placed them in the crock pot basin. See why my wife let's me do this one solo? It's pretty hard to muck up.
I then took a jar of kraut, a 1/2 cup of brown sugar, and some caraway spices and threw them in a bowl and mixed it up as such:
And then dumped that into the crock pot, on top of the pork:
Yum...look at all the kraut. The next step is quite fun; grab an apple, quarter it, and then throw it on top of the kraut and pork as such:
Even the Hattie monster was getting into it; I still can't get her to eat sauerkraut, however.
Eight hours later, and with a side of bread and salad, I give you our first annual crock pot batch of food: pork sirloin and sauerkraut, topped with a local orchid apple.
The best part of this meal is lefties; this one yielded two meals for us. Hattie wasn't a fan, but that's ok. That just means there was more sauerkraut for me to eat. I'll keep pushing sauerkraut on her, though. Don't worry about that.
This doesn't look like much, but trust me, it's highly delicious. If I can make it, anyone can make it...trust me. I think next time I'll go back to Frank's sauerkraut, however. It felt like it could have had a bit more acidity to it. I tried to go with a live kraut but I don't think it matters much when you cook something like this for 8 hours.
And there it is...not as exciting as chasing ghosts, but it was fun to get back into the swing of crock-pot Sundays. With snow already on the ground, more of these Sunday meals to come. Who knows, maybe you'll even give this one a go this weekend to? And if not, let me know what else I could try for a crock pot meal.
Thanks for reading! I hope everyone is healthy and enjoyed their weekend!