Recipe: Chili-Coffee Pork Braised in Belgian Dark Strong Ale

It’s get­ting to be that time of year again when most peo­ple start think­ing about mak­ing com­fort food, some­thing that’ll stick to your ribs and warm you up. If you’re me, you always think about food like that but I com­pletely under­stand that I’m just the type of per­son who will wear white before and after Labor Day. Call me a rebel if you want. I’ll blame it all on genetics.

So I have bot­tles of Bel­gian Dark Strong Ale home­brew in the house (one of the best brews we’ve done so far) and I had a pork shoul­der in the fridge that needed to be made before it spoiled. No one wants to eat meat that may turn you into a zom­bie. We have fringe sci­en­tists for that. I took inven­tory of other food­stuff in the house and decided that it was appro­pri­ate nec­es­sary to make a meal of braised pork, organic veg­eta­bles from this week’s CSA, and beer. I did it and I don’t regret it one bit. I think you should do it too.

Brais­ing basi­cally means you’re sim­mer­ing seared meat in liq­uid until it is cooked through and tender.

As always with my recipes, I encour­age exper­i­men­ta­tion and sub­sti­tu­tion. If you don’t have crem­ini mush­rooms then use sweet potato. If you don’t have sweet potato then use parsnips. What, you’ve never had parsnips!? You should rem­edy that; it’s a game changer.

Since I can’t pos­si­bly pro­vide all the fine read­ers of this blog a bot­tle of home­brew (and hon­estly, I’m too much of a hoarder for that any­way) feel free to make this with Lost Abbey Judg­ment Day or Gulden Draak.

PS – There is a dif­fer­ence between stan­dard chili pow­der and chipo­tle chili pow­der. The chipo­tle chili pow­der adds a warm heat to the dish.

Chili-Coffee Rubbed Pork Shoul­der Braised in Bel­gian Dark Strong Ale

1/8 cup finely ground coffee

1/8 cup brown sugar

1 T chili powder

1 T chipo­tle chili powder

1 T gran­u­lated garlic

2 tsp salt

1 T yel­low mustard

1 bone-in pork shoul­der, about 4 lbs

2 T  _­+ 2 T cook­ing oil

16 oz. Bel­gian Dark Strong Ale

3 large car­rots, scrubbed well, trimmed, and sliced at a diag­o­nal (I don’t typ­i­cally peel mine)

2 red onions, peeled and quartered

1 cup crem­ini mush­rooms, sliced

Method: Com­bine ground cof­fee, brown sugar, chili pow­der, chipo­tle chili pow­der, gran­u­lated gar­lic, and salt in a small bowl. Put the hunk of meat on a cut­ting board or on your counter and rub it all up with the yel­low mus­tard. If your mind is in the gut­ter right now you’ve got it wrong. Please pick your mind back up and put it away. We’re talk­ing about din­ner here, not dessert. After you’ve slathered the pork shoul­der, sprin­kle the chili-coffee rub all over and rub it into the mus­tard and meat. Let it sit and hang out while you’re work­ing on the vegetables.

Pre­heat oven to 325.

In a large pot or pan, heat 2 T of oil over medium-high heat. I pre­fer doing this in a stock­pot because it keeps scald­ing grease from splat­ter­ing every­where. Add the car­rots and let them siz­zle for about two min­utes, then flip them over to siz­zle on the oppo­site side. You want them slightly browned. I use tongs so I can eas­ily pick the pieces up to see when they’re done. Remove the car­rots to a bowl. Add the onions and do the same, let them brown slightly and turn them. The onions should take about 2 or 3 min­utes. Remove the onions to the car­rot party and add the remain­ing 2 T of oil to the pan. You may need to turn the heat down a bit if your oil is smok­ing at this point. I also rec­om­mend open­ing up a win­dow or hav­ing your range vent on because this baby can smoke. Add the meat and brown for a cou­ple min­utes on both sides, until there is a beau­ti­ful crust all over.

At this point, remove the meat and place in a roast­ing pan. Remove the pan from the heat to cool off for a minute or two. Lov­ingly nes­tle the car­rots and onions around the pork shoul­der. Now add the beer to the pan, scrap­ing up all the tasty lit­tle bits of browned good­ness stick­ing to the bot­tom. Pour this over the meat and cover. Put it in the oven and let the hot tub of meati­ness begin. Let it hang out in there for about three hours or until the meat falls apart with ten­der soft­ness when touched.

Is your meat done yet? If so, remove it to a serv­ing plat­ter and lay the veg­eta­bles on top of or beside the meat. They’re com­fort­able with the inti­macy after all they just went through together in that oven. Loosely pull the meat apart with tongs or forks, tak­ing care to remove the bone. Cover the plat­ter to keep the heat in while you’re remov­ing the grease from the broth. Stick a gallon-sized Ziploc bag in a sturdy bowl and pour in the left­over porky beer broth. Let it set­tle for a few min­utes. I made some spinach fet­tuc­cine with a sim­ple brown but­ter sauce while I let the broth set­tle. Once the grease has sep­a­rated it’ll be sit­ting at the top of the bag. Snip a tiny hole in the bot­tom cor­ner of the bag and let it drain into a gravy boat or other serv­ing ves­sel. Once it starts drain­ing to the grease line, pull it away and dis­card. I always keep an extra bowl handy to put the grease bag into (like the one I used to put the car­rots and onions in earlier).

Serve it as an entire meal or make a side or two to go with it. Eat the left­overs in the same fash­ion or use it to make que­sadil­las. Be cre­ative and enjoy! Fol­low with what­ever dessert suits your fancy.

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Amber

A free­lance writer who is sweet on fine food and drink, travel, fam­ily, and photography.

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