Orange Ginger Beer Pork

I’ve got a rough few weeks of work ahead of me, so i wanted to take some time today to unwind and cook. This dish combines a few things I was thinking about – Caramelized Pork, as ya’ll probably know, is one of my faves, so I borrowed some of the cooking techniques from there (quick sear of meat, and then stewing in carbonated beverage to tenderize). I also had a meal the other day with some seared tuna served with a salad with cut pieces of orange. it was soo fresh! So i decided to experiment a little with something a lil orange-y, spicy, tender. Check it out!

Ingredients:

- 2 lbs pork – I used about 6 boneless country style ribs
- 3 inch long piece of ginger
- 1 cup chopped fresh cilantro
- 1 orange
- 2 TB black pepper
- 1 TB paprika
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 2 tsp salt
- 4 cups OJ
- 1 TB olive oil
- just under 1 bottle of beer

- veggies – i used corn, soy beans, baby bok choy. green peas, zucchini could also work well.

1. Chop up all your ginger, cilantro, oranges. remember to peel the ginger ( you can just cut off the skin using the knife like i did), then matchstick and chop it up like this:

The oranges, just make sure you remove the skin surrounding the juicy parts. I also just cut these off with a knife. Super fast.

2. In a large bowl, combine the chopped ginger, cilantro, orange, black pepper, paprika, garlic powder, salt.

Look at all those awesome colors!

3. Then add the OJ, soy sauce, olive oil and 1/2 a bottle of beer and whisk! The best part about using 1/2 of a bottle of beer?

Getting to drink some more while cooking! yeah! (notice, it is a lil difficult to drink beer, cook, and operate a camera at the same time. fair warning.)

Good ol budweiser seems to work well here. Check out that crazy marinade!

3. Then, cut up your meat into 1 inch cube chunks like this:

Remove any parts that are too fatty, but leaving some fat is fine. Helps with the tenderness!

4. Place the meat in the marinade and let site for at least 1 hr to let all that orangey goodness soak into your meat.

5. After the marinating time, Heat up a large pot with some olive oil to very hot, nearly smoking. Carefully pull out the pieces of meat, letting them drain off the excess liquid before tossing them into the pot. You are trying to sear the meat here to lock in the flavor and juiciness. Do this in batches as needed, depending on how big your pot is. You do not want too much liquid to build up in the bottom of your pot or you will not get a good sear like below:

You can see a bit of the caramelization on the meat’s brown edges. YUM!

6. Add all the meat back in the pot, and pour the marinade over top. Pour the rest of beer bottle in if you havne’t finished it (like me. it’s only monday!)

HEre is the pot just starting to come back to boil. Cover the pot and lower the heat to medium and let it cook for about 30 min. Check the taste of the sauce. Add more OJ if it is too salty (as mine was at first). Cover and cook on medium low for at least another 15 min. You will see the sauce getting thicker and the meat getting more tender.

7. Now add in your veggies. They will only need a quick heat up. I overcooked my bok choy a lil b/c i got distracted, but i just tossed in my corn, soy beans, and chopped baby bok choy and turned up the heat for about 3 min.

Serve this over rice, pasta, couscous…or if you want to be super healthy, a fresh salad with spinach and cucumbers. Also garnisch with some slices of orange!

Technorati Tags: Pork,ginger,orange,beer,stew

The orange flavor turned out really well. It’s subtle, but very pervasively fragrant in the meat. I think this will taste even better manana after i take it out of the fridge and reheat it!

Enjoy!