One might not think that these all go together but trust me they do!
Here we are for another food and wine pairing. This one is perfect for summer too! Funny thing about this dinner is that I didn’t plan it out at all. What started as “I don’t know what to do for dinner” became an absolute amazing meal and wine pairing.
We had a large pork butt in the freezer and I knew we intended to eat it but that’s all we had. Rob suggested pulled pork in the crock pot. I was like “Great! How do we prep it?” Rob’s response was “ I don’t know.” Haha
With the main entree decided, I at least knew I wanted a coleslaw salad with it. Not your normal mushy wet mess coleslaw but fresh and crisp coleslaw. For this slaw I needed ingredients: red cabbage (green would work it is just my preference), fennel (this gives the slaw such a good flavor and adds to crunch), cucumbers, radishes, green onions, cilantro, and I decided to throw in some carrots as well for color. I love love love mayonnaise and am especially fond of avocado mayo but for this slaw I also made the mix with toasted sesame oil and lemon juice, which adds a very fresh and toasty note to the slaw. Very yum!
Our plans for this very fun Sunday consisted of a round of golf which we normally start in the afternoon and finish right at dinner time so crock pot meal is an ideal situation for us. As mentioned earlier we have never made a pulled pork before so as every normal person these days does I got on Pinterest and started searching through recipes. Prior to this we talked a little about what we wanted to season it with. Rob mentioned putting a dry rub on the pork first and my request was CUMIN! I heart cumin with a passion. I personally have lots of digestive issues and when I eat foods with cumin (like curries) it just makes me feel good, so we use a lot of cumin (and turmeric) in our home. Side note for you food nerds cumin has detoxifying properties and is also considered digestive warming, or in other words a digestive aid. Keep the cumin coming haha. Back to the pulled pork….
I pulled a recipe from Pinterest, link here, but ended up improvising a little bit which makes cooking so much fun for us. For meat like this dry rub is key. Our dry rub was simple, cumin, kosher salt, coarse ground pepper. We combined all ingredients and started rubbing. A real good massage is just what a good pork butt needs. It is a good idea to let the meat sit at room temperature for 15-20 minutes to let the spices soak in and in the meantime Rob cooked up the special sauce. In a medium skillet on medium heat, he cooked up diced white onions with garlic. He cooked the onions until they started to brown. He then added 2 tablespoons of tomato paste and chili powder to the cooked onion and stirred it in well. He lets this mesh together for about 3 minutes. Very last thing to add is 3 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar and try to scrape up any bits that remain on the pan. Turn off heat.
Now you should be ready to load in the pork. One of my favorite ways to get creative in the kitchen is to cook with wine or beer. It is very common for me to add wine or beer into all kinds of dishes, stir fry, soups, chilies, sauces, and always in crock pot recipes! Go to for this was a can of beer, but which one? You can use any beer for this but I always recommended cooking with something that you will actually drink. I do not drink cheap wine (for the most part, I have exceptions to every rule) so why would I cook with it? Since Rob was master chef on this I let him choose, and the winner was Guinness! We have a place in our hearts for the creamy dark beer after our trip to Ireland which included a tour of the Guinness factory in Dublin, needless to say you can usually find a can of Guinness in our house. Rob poured the beer into the bottom of the crock pot, placed the pork in the crock pot, and then smothered the pork with the cooked tomato onion mixture. Close the lid and set the crock pot to low for 6 hours. Bam! (Side note our crock pot is a hot one, it cooks higher than most so requires less cooking time, this recipe could take up to 8 hours for some)
One quick shout out to Butcher’s Box! Butcher’s Box is a meat subscription delivery service that specializes in sourcing humanly treated, grass fed, free range, hormone/antibiotic free, and overall happy animals. We love using them and find there meat is above exceptional quality, like this pork butt! Rob and I very rarely buy other meat other than butchers and find the quantities work well for us.
While our dinner cooked up we got in some real good playtime. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle for me means making time for activities and people you love. Getting outside and having some fun is a great way to burn off stress and reconnect with others. Even when you’re married and live together I find it’s important to prioritize spending time together outside of the house to reconnect and remember why we chose each other in the first place. One of Rob’s passions is golf and I am lucky enough that he has shared that passion with me and has properly instructed me on the game. Guess what? Golf is challenging ha! It takes time and a lot of patience but when you finally make that perfect contact with the ball and its goes 180 yards it makes it all worth it! It is also a great way to get all those steps in and according to Apple Watch I burn about 180 calories an hour! Great activity, super fun, great company, and by the end I work up a serious appetite!
Back at home the pork is ready and smells amazing! Now I just need to put together the slaw. I love a good coleslaw and I love mayonnaise but find that many coleslaws’ are to watery, soggy, and lacking flavor intensity. I think I found the perfect remedy for that. My new favorite coleslaw contains red cabbage, fennel, cucumbers, radishes, green onions, carrots mostly for color, lemon juice, toasted sesame oil, sesame seeds, salt, red pepper flakes, and avocado mayonnaise.
Side note about my favorite mayo. I have found that I have a serious problem with soy (also gluten sensitive) and have discovered that soy is in everything!! Literally all oils, mayo, chocolate (gah) , and all processed foods. I can usually eat small amounts here and there but for the most part I am soy free, sorry tofu I used to love you. Now with the mayonnaise I couldn’t believe that basically all commercial mayo the first ingredient is soybean oil??? Sometimes canola oil which also is not great for you because of the inflammatory effects it has on the body and all the processing it goes through. Lucky for us there are people out there who realized the same thing and now there are several companies producing avocado oil based mayo! Favorite brands are Primal Kitchen and Chosen Kitchen…. Now back to the slaw
I know this slaw has a bunch of ingredients but I promise it is super delicious and worth all the chopping. You could even skip some of the chopping and get a pre chopped bag of slaw mix. Beauty of this recipe is you can make it how you like however I highly recommend keeping the fennel, sesame oil, and avo mayo. This slaw was perfectly crunchy, umami rich, and satisfying. I will say I wish I would have pre chopped some veggies earlier in the day because I was so hungry at this point I was already eating some pulled pork haha.
Once I tried the meat right out of the crock pot I knew this meal was made for a bottle of wine. The meat was incredibly tender, juicy, flavorful, a little spice with cumin, garlic, and cinnamon coming through. But what wine? There are several tricks for pairing food with wine along with a couple surprises which can make for some very interesting and fun pairings. For me it’s about pairing with the strongest flavor. Also for this dish the meat had a perceptible amount of fat in it making it very rich. So the strongest flavors in the pork were fats and the spices. After some thought and some perusing through the wine cellar I found it! A 2016 Bordeaux, more specifically from Saint Emilion and the producer is Chateau La Claymore.
Bordeaux, I am sure you’ve heard, is a wine growing region in France. Bordeaux is known for its red blends and is divided by the Gironde river and areas are referred to being Right Bank or Left Bank with reference to this river. Saint Emilion is a Right Bank region where the red blends are dominated by Merlot and Cabernet Franc. Really in all these blends you can expect to find some Cabernet Sauvignon and to a lesser extent Malbec and Petit Verdot as well. After researching I found that Chateau La Claymore grapes are grown on an interesting variety of soils which can impart unique flavor characteristics on the wine. The grapes are grown on Fronsac Molass, limestone, and clay. Clay actually helps the soil retain water and when they do not irrigate can be the difference between a good and horrible grape yield come harvest. Upon tasting the wine I picked up notes of black cherry, red plum, nutmeg, black pepper, tobacco, and hint of dandelion greens. The wine is high in tannins which balanced the fat in the dish, complex, rich, and followed by a soft mouthfeel.
On to the main event. Rob definitely wanted a pulled pork sandwich, while I opted for the grain free option and made myself a pulled pork and coleslaw bowl. For the sandwich we buttered fresh sourdough bread and fried it up in a pan placed heaping amounts of pork onto the bread and added a bit extra of our Primal Kitchen BBQ sauce put some slaw on the side and we were in food heaven.
Overall we were more than happy with this meal and was a perfect end to a perfect day. We enjoyed it all to the last sip.
Cheers!
Also if you are interested in this wine you can find it here. Trust me its a bargain!
Find this wine here https://www.wine-searcher.com/find/la+claymore+lussac+st+emilion+bordeaux+france/
