Friday, September 26, 2008

Pork and saurkraut

I'm glad to be back here after a long hiatus.

About two months ago, I made myself a batch of pork and sauerkraut to take for lunches at work. I whipped up some in the oven and it didn't give me the yield I was hoping for. I filled only three containers and now decided to double or double and a half the recipe and fill the biggest casserole dish I have. The last time I made it, I picked up a plastic bag of sauerkraut and the cheapest kind of pork I could find in the meat section at Giant. Turned out to be a pack of ribs for about $4.50 and the combination worked out quite well. The oven dish was only filled about halfway last time. When I went to the store this time at Redner's, there were no plastic packages of kraut like I bought at Giant, so I had to do a little guessing. I had no idea of how much was in that plastic bag and I ended up picking up four 27 oz. cans of kraut, totalling almost 7 pounds and managed to find a 4 pound piece of 1/2 butt pork picnic for close to $7. I decided tonight to cut up the pork and get everything ready to make on Saturday. Since I knew I would not need 4 pounds of the pig and when I opened the package and well hidden on the bottom was a thick one inch piece of fat. I sliced off the one inch, by three inch by eight inch of fat, got out my scale and the hunk of fat weighed in at fifteen ounces!!!! I don't throw things like this in the trash, as it might stink up the kitchen so I wrapped it in plastic wrap and storing it in the fridge until trash day on Wednesday. Maybe I should take the hunk of fat back, label it "free" and put it back in Redner's meat section. Maybe some Hispanic or Black, might find it a delicacy...lol.

Anyway, I'm sure I have more kraut than I need and enough pork. I already have the good old mashed potatoes made and have five containers in the freezer to go with the kraut.

Just watch what you buy in the meat section. I'm sure my butt has a two slabs at least on each side, even though my butt is small......lol

Take care.

1 comment:

Nate said...

I get the same yield from the pork. Picnics and butts have skin and bone taking up to 1/4 of the weight.

On the bright side, it costs me under $2 a pound and makes a few meals in the crock pot, so I can't complain.