I can’t claim this slow cooker recipe as my own but I can claim that I ate it all up. Living alone, I sometimes find it hard to eat properly – cooking for one can seem like too much effort but I’m not a pot noodle or ready meal type of girl so cooking up big pots of food to eat over a few days seems to be the way forward. This recipe was for four although I polished it off over two days. And with any stew – it definitely tasted better then next day!
You can view the original recipe here although this is a different book to the one I took it from (Ultimate Slow Cooker). But for ease, here it is again with some tiny tweaks of mine:
Ingredients (serves 4)
- 1 tbsp sunflower oil
- 4 pork shoulder steaks
- 1 onion, diced
- 2 tbsp plain flour
- 400ml chicken or vegetable stock
- Grated rind and juice of 1 large orange
- 3 tbsp plum sauce (I used Aldi’s ‘specially selected’ plum chutney)
- 2 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 fresh red chilli (seeds removed and finely sliced)
- 4 whole star anise
- Salt & cracked black pepper for taste)
Method:
- Heat the oil in a frying pan and brown the pork over a high heat. Set aside.
- Fry the onion in the same pan until softened and then add the flour and stir it thoroughly.
- Add the stock, plum sauce, soy sauce, chilli, orange juice & rind . Give it a good stir and let it come up to the boil.
- Put the pork steaks into the slow cooker and cover with the sauce. Turn it on and go to work, go out, do whatever you fancy – this bad boy takes 8- 10 hours on low.
Proper comfort grub and really different from your every day stew or casserole. I served with steamed kale and creamy mashed potatoes but given the flavours from the plum, chilli and star anise, this would probably work well with steamed rice too. The ingredients list is quite long but its so simple to throw together that this makes a perfect midweek meal.
Even with three of us to feed, I still bulk cook at the weekends and the slow cooker is perfect for that kind of cooking. Your casserole looks totally delicious I must add it to my list of dishes to make. Thank you so much for joining in the Slow Cooked Challenge.
Definitely the time of year for slow cooking – I'm using a lot of ox cheek right now – and that started well before enjoying that dish at The Smokehouse, Alex – and it's a the kind of meat that feels like it's giving you a hug. Not really used a recipe, I've just chucked in the usual kind of flavourings and let it do it's stuff. I might well try this – I've got huge amounts of marmalade right now and might use that in it. Tim
oh my word I adore star anise! This looks so rich and stunningly wintery and warming. Beautiful stuff!
Thanks guys for your comments! I'll be making this again for sure 🙂
Another gorgeous dish from you, I love slow cooked meats and with these flavours, means you can eat like a queen 🙂 x