It can be amazing the advice one will get on Youtube in the department of putting a pan on the stove, putting some water in it, and boiling it. From there one graduates to hard boiled eggs. Many, many silly ideas will be floated. Finally, the daring decide to try their hand at dinner. From what I've seen so far, the idea is to bar entry to anyone that needs to eat food today.
I decided to have pulled pork for dinner about a week ago. I bought a pork tenderloin, hoping that would work. The facts are, I've never roasted pork before, so I tried to educate myself with the wisdom of those that had. Wow. What a wasteland of drivel. First you will need thousands of dollars of grills, with hickory wood to smoke your roast in. Or just build a whole house devoted to that. Then some pans, I suppose made of gold. Now you will have to also purchase hundreds of dollars of ingredients to use for dry rub. After that, your life savings will need to be spent on every spice known to man for BBQ sauce.
How many hours have I now spent trying to get to the bottom of this? I'm embarrassed to say I've been down this road before, and been told that I need gold, frankincense and myrrh to season these rare delicacies with. Tuna asked me what I did yesterday. I told her that I had been trying to make pulled pork happen for dinner. "So you go to the BBQ restaurant and buy it. Why would you bother with cooking with all the money you have?" "Well, for one thing, 2 1/2 lbs of pork is $10. But it's at least $10 to buy one lb of pulled pork, plus gas to get there, and the time." I don't know where she got the idea that I have money to burn. I had already been to this fabulous restaurant and ordered a pound of pulled pork, which I paid around $12 for. When I got home, I realized they had sold me a hamburger bun with 1 oz of pork on it. Not even BBQ sauce. It was too far to go to take it back. Another time I had ordered a rack of ribs. Well, there were many problems. They liked to come in and open at around 10:00 am, and if you show up at 2:00 the ribs are still raw. But they sold them to me anyway. If you go in at 4:00, they will say they are sold out. They don't want to sell a pound of pulled pork, or a rack of ribs. They want to sell a sandwich for $12, or two ribs with a potato for $20. And anyway, I don't really like the way most restaurants season pork, which is to use mostly sugar.
And so I truly believed I was going to do this myself. It just can't be that hard. I located most of the rest of my stash of spices today. Wow, dill seed, celery seed, and guess what, crushed red pepper. Sirachi hot sauce, minced garlic, cloves of garlic, lemon juice, soy sauce, more soy sauce. I know there is dry mustard, but where? I think I bought the dill and celery seed, along with a can of beets, to make pickled eggs. I saw that on Youtube. And? Really, I panicked. Someone else said I needed liquid English toffee favoring and lemon extract. Pure vanilla extract. A giant bottle of it arrived one day by surprise. I don't remember ordering that. I sure didn't know I bought that much.
I spoke to my sister. Oh, they make wonderful tender pork with a sous vide. Researching this, I saw that I might also need a vacuum sealer. That's something like buying the grill to smoke it with.
My brother told me to put my tenderloin in a pot, put in some water, bring the pot up to a boil, turn it down to simmer, put a lid on it and simmer it for about five hours.
So finally someone that seemed to know how to do this. Or I could try the Instant Pot way. I may cut the roast in half, and cook half on the stove, and half in the Instant Pot, then maybe they will both be good, or at least one will be OK.
"I think you would do well to buy some Kraft BBQ sauce, and don't worry about making it yourself," he said. Once again, I was steered right.
I suppose when you go on Youtube to look at cooking videos, they understand that someone has asked them, "What's the weirdest, most difficult, time consuming and tedious way of making pulled pork and BBQ sauce in the world?" and "What's the most expensive way? Understand, money is no object."
I told Tuna that I had written a blog about Edgar Allan Poe's poem, The Raven. She began to tell me what an evil man he was. I said, "He was a great poet. He is my favorite." She continued to berate him and his poetry. I don't know where she got any of her ideas about Poe. It was pretty withering.
So what's going on? The full moon? It's like pulled pork and BBQ are satanic.
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