Sometimes I think people don’t use their crockpot much because it takes a little advance planning and usually there is a long cooking time associated with any slow cooker recipe. Even though the cooking time isn’t you physically standing and slaving over a hot stove, there’s something about seeing 8 hours of cooking time on a recipe that just makes it “feel” hard. But really guys, it’s time to get over that mental block. Most of the crockpot recipes that we make are the cooking effort equivalent of making a grilled cheese sandwich. Ok, so that’s not the greatest comparison for a Paleo recipe site, but you get the point. I’ll say it again. Use. Your. Crockpot. Period. Ok, now on to this amazing chile verde recipe. I don’t claim to be an expert in Mexican cuisine, but I have always loved chile verde and wanted to re-create some of the authentic flavors in this recipe. You know, that uniquely smoky, sweet and bitter flavor of the tomatillos and chilies, garlic and cilantro that all blend together to make the perfect sauce to cover tender bits of pork with. Fortunately, it turns out that nailing the sauce wasn’t as hard as I imagined. With some inspiration from PaleOMG and Simply Recipes, I formulated the basic ingredients and plan, which involves roasting the tomatillos and peppers to impart that delicious smoky flavor. After that you just blend up the roasted tomatillos and peppers with some garlic, onion, cilantro and spices and you have yourself the perfect chile verde sauce for slow cooking a pork shoulder (or butt) in. You can even prepare the sauce the night before you plan on cooking your pork so everything is ready to go.
Oh yeah, did I mention that your house will be completely filled with the delicious smells of this crockpot pork chile verde when you cook it? For me that was the best part. I could hardly wait for the crockpot to do it’s thing, the smells were so enticing I just wanted to heap a pile of pork and chile verde sauce on a plate and stuff my face.
This recipe turned out tasting just as good as it smelled. Go make yourself a big batch, re-heating the leftovers is almost the best part! It’s versatile too, you can have it straight up, with rice (if you eat rice), on a bed of greens, in a tortilla for a taco (we love Siete tortillas), etc. The options are endless. Also, we ended up saving some of the leftover verde sauce in a mason jar in the fridge and just spooned it on the leftover pork to reheat it in a pan the next day. Once the pork was gone, we still had some sauce left over so we also made a batch of crockpot chicken thighs with chile verde sauce. Seriously, this sauce was the gift that kept on giving for us. We ate off of it for three days straight!
Don’t be afraid to bust out that crockpot! Give this crockpot pork chile verde a try for a hearty and flavorful Mexican Paleo dinner option. Let us know how you like it by leaving a comment below, and tag us on Instagram @realsimplegood so we can check it out!
