brainwagon

I haven’t posted any of my culinary explorations lately, so I thought that I would rectify this wrong by detailing something that I tried for yesterday’s dinner. I’m a huge fan of pulled pork, especially in the form of barbecue pork sandwiches. I like getting a toasted bunn, piling it with this shredded pork, and then slathering on tons of a nice spicy barbecue sauce, and eating that with some delicious potato salad.

But that’s not very Weight Watchers friendly, so I don’t get to do it very often.

But, I did see a good idea on Calorie Commandos the other day, which was to make the same kind of thing, but use turkey legs instead of pork. I took ideas from their recipe and adapted it to what I had on hand.

I began by heating a tiny bit of olive oil and sweating a diced onion and a diced red pepper over medium heat. I didn’t have any shredded carrots, but I did have some of those tiny baby carrots (I buy them by the 5 lb bag for munching) so I just dumped in a handful of those, and let them sweat for a bit. I then added the seasoning: chili powder, cumin, paprika, red pepper flake, cayenne, black pepper and let that go for just a few more minutes, until it begins to smell and look good. Then I turned off the heat. The original recipe called for these to be cooked in the oven for four hours, but I work, so starting this in the evening would mean dinner @ 9:30 at the earliest, so I did it slightly differently: I skinned my turkey legs, and dumped them in my crockpot in the morning. I then covered them with this vegetable mixture, and then added enough canned nonfat chicken stock to cover. Plugged in the crockpot, set it to low, and left for work.

When I returned, the meat was literally falling off the bone. Took some tongs, and fished out all the legs, and let them cool on a rack. Then, I went through and pulled out all the bones and any tiny bits of skin that I missed before, and shredded all the meat by hand. The turkey legs actually contain a fair number of smallish sharp bones, so take good care while doing this step. You’ll be left with a pile of deliciously seasoned seasoned meat, very soft and delicious. I then toasted some buns, and piled on this meat mixture, and added some of my favorite barbecue sauce. I like Sweet Baby Ray’s among all the store brands I have tried, it’s actually quite acceptable in a pinch. I also had some fat-free vegetarian baked beans, and a side salad.

A feast!

You can do the same recipe with chicken thighs. Delicious.

Wish I had left overs.