What’s for dinner the week? (Again). Sick of this question and need of some fast family meal ideas? (Yeah.) Meal planning experts recommend making things easy on ourselves and cooking a big ol’ pot of somethin’ at the beginning of the week that you can reinvent and serve for days. Gotta admit I don’t do it that often, but I do… DAMN IT WORKS.
Last week’s new big ol’ pot of somethin’? PULLED PORK. “Spicy Pop Pulled Pork,” to be exact (thanks Pioneer Woman for your do-pretty-much-nothin’-and-get-somethin’-fabulous recipe… although I skipped the chipotle peppers in my recipe because my four year old flips out about anything spicy). In the morning, I followed the 5-minute prep instructions in the recipe (dumped 2 cans of soda on top of a raw bone-in pork shoulder rubbed with salt and pepper, tucked in by quartered onions)….
Put the whole thing in the oven, set the timer for 6 hours, took it out and shredded it apart. (Ok ok, there are few MINOR extra steps that involve turning it twice while in the oven, but THAT’S IT.)
Delicious. And when you add the cooking juice on top of the meat? Deeeeeee-liiiiii-cioussssssss. Mmm. Our first meal with the “PPP” was tacos with tomatoes, shredded cheese, avocado and cucumber wrapped in warm tortillas. YUM. Our next meal was Pork Fried Rice from I Am A Food Blog. The rice was embarrassingly-easy to make and I had all the ingredients stocked in my kitchen, so that was that. Both my girls ate it up (but we are soy sauce freaks over here, so that was a no-brainer).
Night three? “PPP” with homemade macaroni-and-cheese, roasted cauliflower and grilled corn. I’ve been doing the roasted fall veggies for a while now, because they’re overly brainless to make and just taste sooooo goooooood. Grilled corn is, well, grilled corn — olive oil and garlic salt smeared on corn cobs, thrown on a hot grill and turned over a few times. The mac-n-cheese was the only thing that took some effort, but with this no-roux, stovetop recipe I found for a kick-a$$ cream sauce using milk, flour and shredded cheese it also fell into the category of ‘easy-to-make.’ BAM. BOOM. WHAM. (You hungry yet?)
So there… three – THREE! – dinners done with one 5-lb pork shoulder. That’s what I call fast family food.
WHAT ARE YOUR FAST FAMILY RECIPES THAT KEEP YOU EATING ALL WEEK? SHARE!
