Pork Shoulder Slow Cooked in Beer

Slow cooked pork shoulder is a great building block for many recipes including a variety of sandwiches, quesadillas, tostadas, tacos, tamales, empanadas, breakfast burritos, etc…  One pork shoulder can feed a small army with fairly little effort.  No army, no problem - eat it all week long in a wide range of dishes.  Pork shoulder can be made year round and does not heat up the kitchen like using the oven would in summer months.  Some planning and lead time is required.  The ingredients are fairly simple:

3-5 lb bone in pork shoulder

¼ Cup chili powder

1 Tbs coriander

1 Tbs sea salt

1 tomato

1 Onion

½ head garlic - peeled

½ - 1 cup lager beer

Mix the chili powder, coriander, and sea salt.  Roll the pork shoulder in the chili powder mixture.  Use up all of the mixture.  Place the pork shoulder in a Crockpot.  Coarsely dice the tomato, onion, and garlic and add to the crock pot.  Add the beer to the Crockpot.  Adjust the amount of beer depending on the amount of pork.  Too much cooking liquid can dry out a pork shoulder.  Cover and cook on low heat until tender, about 8 hours.  Discard the bone and skin.  Shred the pork and keep with the cooking liquid.

The pork shoulder moments before setting the 8 hour timer and walking away.

In the near future I will post a Peanut Árbol salsa recipe to pair with this. My favorite use for this pork is in a taco consisting of a soft shell corn tortilla with avocado, hard grating cheese, and with peanut Árbol salsa over the top. Breakfast burritos and barbeque sandwiches come in a very close second and third.