BBQ Novice

By Tricia Gillespie

Last week I was dreaming of white sandy beaches and barbeque.  I couldn’t get the luscious dark red sauce out of my mind, so I decided to make pulled pork sandwiches this weekend.  I remember seeing, like, thirty thousand barbeque recipes on Pinterest, but when I went looking, I hadn’t pinned a one. 

Huh?  I always Pin when I’m hungry.  They have the most tantalizing photos of food.  I can drool all night and not gain an ounce.  It’s kind of like the patch for smokers, only it’s for food addicts.

So I did what any fearless culinary novice would do: I improvised.  I saw no less than a hundred recipes that used three ingredients – soda, BBQ sauce, and salt/pepper.  Lots of people use diet soda in their BBQ, but I decided to throw caution to the wind and use the real stuff.  I do not think anyone with sweet tea running through her veins would use Diet Pepsi.  Correct me if I’m wrong.

In the lineup is Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ Sauce, Dr. Pepper, and Seasoned Salt. 

I sprinkled the roasts with seasoned salt, put the roasts in the crockpot, added Dr. Pepper with abandon, and squeezed about half the large bottle of barbeque sauce all over the meat.  Then I let it cook.

After about seven hours, I drained off some fat from the top, and pulled apart the pork.  I returned the pulled pork to the crockpot and let it absorb all the juice.  In its pulled form, it stayed in the crockpot for another hour.  Then I loaded it on whole wheat rolls, because I’m healthy like that, and gave it another good squeeze of sauce.

The only thing missing was the banana pudding, but I’m on a diet, you know.

Bio:  Tricia Gillespie cooks up fun over on The Domestic Fringe.  When she’s not busy putting out stove fires with sweet tea, she’s finding humor in this reality we call life.  She has two kids, one husband, and a Betta fish named Hot Shot.  She wishes it rained chocolate and French fries, because then she would never cook again.  Go visit her at thedomesticfringe.com.