Flashback Friday - Pulled Pork with Peaches

This post originally appeared on Minxeats.com on March 28, 2014. I know Lent's not over, but whatever - I don't participate. So pass the pork!

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The February issue of Saveur magazine has several interesting recipes for peaches, which seems odd when there's snow on the ground. But canned peaches can be just as tasty; indeed the focus of the article was canning. And while I don't do any canning myself, Del Monte, Libby's, etc., does.

When I spotted a relatively inexpensive pork shoulder at the grocery store, I decided we needed to try the peach-braised pulled pork. Once home, I realized the recipe called for a 3 lb boneless shoulder, and we had just purchased one that weighed 8.5 lbs, bone-in. It also called for whole cloves, smoked paprika, and lager beer. We had ground cloves, no paprika, and a couple bottles of my brother-in-law's home brewed ale. So I do what I always do--make substitutions. Allspice works just as well as cloves when it comes to matching with peaches, and as long as the beer wasn't stout, it would be fine. As for the paprika--I could have sworn I had a big bag of it in the cupboard, but I suppose I'll have to order more from Penzey's or the Spice House. There's really no substitute, so I just skipped it completely.

I knew from the get-go that 3 hours wouldn't be enough cooking time for the porky behemoth we bought--but what would be?

Three hours into cooking, the meat was cooked but still a little tough. I decided to hack the shoulder into chunks, to help it along. By four+ hours, I was getting impatient and hauled the thing out of the oven. It was plenty tender, but not tender enough to shred with two forks. Instead, I chopped it up with a big knife, all the while sampling it to make sure it was good. I'm all about quality control.

The magazine calls for using only half a cup of the pan juices. There were at least 2 cups, and it seemed like a real waste to toss it (and the onions, garlic, and peaches within it) because it tasted so rich and porky. So I emulsified the whole mess with a stick blender, added half a cup of brown sugar and the rest of the peaches and peach syrup, and boiled it vigorously for about fifteen minutes. And instead of serving it with sauteed onions and peach jam, I made some slaw with brussels sprouts, because that's what we had.

It was great, but we had pork for days and days. And days. Not complaining, but 8.5 lbs is a lot of pork for two people.

Peach-Braised Pulled Pork, adapted from Saveur

3 tbsp olive oil
3-8 lb boneless pork shoulder
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
4 allspice berries
2 bay leaves
4 cloves garlic, smashed
1 large yellow onion, cut into quarters
2 (12-oz.) bottles beer
1 (1-qt.) jar canned peaches in syrup, drained or use store-bought
1/2 cup brown sugar
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 325°.

Heat oil over medium-high heat in a baking pan or dutch oven large enough to hold your meat.

Season pork with salt and pepper. Brown meat on all sides, about 10–12 minutes. Remove meat from pan and add allspice, bay leaves, garlic, and onion to pan; cook until browned, 6–8 minutes. Add beer; cook, stirring and scraping up browned bits from bottom of pan, until reduced by half, 10–12 minutes.

Return pork to pan and add half the peaches. Bake, covered, until pork is tender and an instant-read thermometer inserted into pork reads 190°, 3–5 hours. Let cool. If pork is tender enough, use two forks to shred the meat, otherwise, chop it with a sharp knife.

Pour two cups of the pan juices, plus any solids (minus bay leaves), into a sauce pan. Puree with a stick blender. Add the remaining peaches and their juice and the brown sugar. Bring mixture to a boil over medium-high heat and cook for fifteen minutes or so. Season with salt and pepper.

Stir chopped meat into the sauce. If you are using a huge shoulder, like we did, save some of the meat for other uses, like pasta sauce.

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Flashback Friday - Pulled Pork with Peaches

This post originally appeared on Minxeats.com on March 28, 2014.

The February issue of Saveur magazine has several interesting recipes for peaches, which seems odd when there's snow on the ground. But canned peaches can be just as tasty; indeed the focus of the article was canning. And while I don't do any canning myself, Del Monte, Libby's, etc., does.

When I spotted a relatively inexpensive pork shoulder at the grocery store, I decided we needed to try the peach-braised pulled pork. Once home, I realized the recipe called for a 3 lb boneless shoulder, and we had just purchased one that weighed 8.5 lbs, bone-in. It also called for whole cloves, smoked paprika, and lager beer. We had ground cloves, no paprika, and a couple bottles of my brother-in-law's home brewed ale. So I do what I always do--make substitutions. Allspice works just as well as cloves when it comes to matching with peaches, and as long as the beer wasn't stout, it would be fine. As for the paprika--I could have sworn I had a big bag of it in the cupboard, but I suppose I'll have to order more from Penzey's or the Spice House. There's really no substitute, so I just skipped it completely.

I knew from the get-go that 3 hours wouldn't be enough cooking time for the porky behemoth we bought--but what would be?

Three hours into cooking, the meat was cooked but still a little tough. I decided to hack the shoulder into chunks, to help it along. By four+ hours, I was getting impatient and hauled the thing out of the oven. It was plenty tender, but not tender enough to shred with two forks. Instead, I chopped it up with a big knife, all the while sampling it to make sure it was good. I'm all about quality control.

The magazine calls for using only half a cup of the pan juices. There were at least 2 cups, and it seemed like a real waste to toss it (and the onions, garlic, and peaches within it) because it tasted so rich and porky. So I emulsified the whole mess with a stick blender, added half a cup of brown sugar and the rest of the peaches and peach syrup, and boiled it vigorously for about fifteen minutes. And instead of serving it with sauteed onions and peach jam, I made some slaw with brussels sprouts, because that's what we had.

It was great, but we had pork for days and days. And days. Not complaining, but 8.5 lbs is a lot of pork for two people.

Peach-Braised Pulled Pork, adapted from Saveur

3 tbsp olive oil
3-8 lb boneless pork shoulder
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
4 allspice berries
2 bay leaves
4 cloves garlic, smashed
1 large yellow onion, cut into quarters
2 (12-oz.) bottles beer
1 (1-qt.) jar canned peaches in syrup, drained or use store-bought
1/2 cup brown sugar
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 325°.

Heat oil over medium-high heat in a baking pan or dutch oven large enough to hold your meat.

Season pork with salt and pepper. Brown meat on all sides, about 10–12 minutes. Remove meat from pan and add allspice, bay leaves, garlic, and onion to pan; cook until browned, 6–8 minutes. Add beer; cook, stirring and scraping up browned bits from bottom of pan, until reduced by half, 10–12 minutes.

Return pork to pan and add half the peaches. Bake, covered, until pork is tender and an instant-read thermometer inserted into pork reads 190°, 3–5 hours. Let cool. If pork is tender enough, use two forks to shred the meat, otherwise, chop it with a sharp knife.

Pour two cups of the pan juices, plus any solids (minus bay leaves), into a sauce pan. Puree with a stick blender. Add the remaining peaches and their juice and the brown sugar. Bring mixture to a boil over medium-high heat and cook for fifteen minutes or so. Season with salt and pepper.

Stir chopped meat into the sauce. If you are using a huge shoulder, like we did, save some of the meat for other uses, like pasta sauce.



Posted on Minxeats.com.

Blue Pit BBQ

We'd been meaning to try Blue Pit BBQ for a while and finally got around to it last month. Located in Hampden across Union Avenue from Union Craft Brewery and Artifact Coffee, Blue Pit is a bourbon bar as well as a 'cue joint. They offer 40+ bourbons, plus 20+ ryes, and dozens of other whiskies. There are a few cocktails, a list of beer in cans, and if you simply must have wine with your pulled pork (weirdo), they have a bottle or two of that hanging around, too.

Service is pub style. You order at a counter, take a number, then sit somewhere patiently and wait for your food to be brought to you. The bar area on the first floor has a few tables, and there's a patio, but we chose to eat upstairs where the tables are larger, the light is better for photographs, and there were no other diners (for it was 4pm on a weekend afternoon). The lack of chatter around us, however, meant we noticed the seemingly endless loop of music by Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons. Fine if you like that sort of thing (and my Dad did get into it quite a bit).

We went whole hog, so to speak, and ordered three kinds of meat and three sides--a pound of brisket, a half rack of ribs, and a pound of pulled pork, plus mac and cheese, collard greens, and baked beans.

I am going to confess that we are semi-regulars at Andy Nelson's, that 'cue stalwart in Cockeysville. Andy's grub has only gotten better over the years (his beans are a-maze-ing), so it was really hard, nay, impossible, for me to not make comparisons. But I'm going to be as fair as I can here.

The brisket, rubbed with local Zeke's coffee before being barbecued, was pretty darn good. Smoky, but not overwhelmingly so, with a nice edge of fat that kept the meat moist (dry brisket is a sad thing). The bourbon-glazed St Louis-style ribs also tasted good, but they were very hard to cut apart with a plastic knife. That's not to say the meat wasn't tender, but there was some connective tissue thing going on in there which led to a bad hack job on our part. The glaze on the ribs is lightly sweet, but if you want more wet sweetness, there are several styles of sauce available in squeeze bottles on each table. Out of the sauce choices (which included mustard, vinegar, sweet and hot, and smoky), I liked the Zeke's coffee-spiked sauce. It was a bit sweeter than the others, but it reminded me a good deal of the house sauce at Cafe Tattoo, a bbq joint that used to be in Gardenville on Belair Road. (God, I miss that place.)

The pulled pork was nicely moist, if not particularly smoky, and was just fine without an extra dose of sauce (although I'd probably add some if I were eating it in a sandwich).

All three sides were good. The collards, made with neck bones and flavored with sherry vinegar were extremely tender; I can never get mine so soft. I loved the vinegar flavor, wished there was even more, and doused it with a bit of the vinegar sauce on the table to bring the tang up a tad. The baked beans, made with bits of both brisket and pork, were fine (and the only thing I'm going to compare unfavorably to Andy Nelson's, mostly because I love the latter so much). Finally, the four cheese mac and cheese was a nice creamy and slightly bland foil to all of the other textures and flavors on the table.

In addition to all the meaty goodness, Blue Pit also offers the new yuppie bbq nod to vegetarians and vegans--pulled jackfruit. I'd really hate to be a vegan in a bbq joint, but I suppose if they drink enough bourbon they won't notice that their sandwich isn't full of beef.

Service was great, mostly in that there was so little of it needed. Someone took our order and gave us cups for soft drinks. Someone else brought our liquor, and a third person brought all of our food--pretty quickly, too--and pointed out the location of extra utensils, and should we need them, carry-out containers and bags for transporting them home.

So...while not that favorite county bbq joint, Blue Pit more than holds its own. Plus it's a non-chain restaurant in the city. With enough good bourbon to drown in. Go.

Blue Pit BBQ
1601 Union Ave
Baltimore, MD 21211
(443) 948-5590



Posted on Minxeats.com.

Flashback Friday- Pulled Pork with Peaches

Sometimes, when things don't go exactly as planned, one has to make adjustments. This is as true of cooking as anything else.

--Kathy

This post was originally published on March 28, 2014.
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Pulled Pork with Peaches
The February issue of Saveur magazine has several interesting recipes for peaches, which seems odd when there's snow on the ground. But canned peaches can be just as tasty; indeed the focus of the article was canning. And while I don't do any canning myself, Del Monte, Libby's, etc., does.

When I spotted a relatively inexpensive pork shoulder at the grocery store, I decided we needed to try the peach-braised pulled pork.

Once home, I realized the recipe called for a 3 lb boneless shoulder, and we had just purchased one that weighed 8.5 lbs, bone-in. It also called for whole cloves, smoked paprika, and lager beer. We had ground cloves, no paprika, and a couple bottles of my brother-in-law's home brewed ale. So I do what I always do--make substitutions. Allspice works just as well as cloves when it comes to matching with peaches, and as long as the beer wasn't stout, it would be fine. As for the paprika--I could have sworn I had a big bag of it in the cupboard, but I suppose I'll have to order more from Penzey's or the Spice House. There's really no substitute, so I just skipped it completely.

I knew from the get-go that 3 hours wouldn't be enough cooking time for the porky behemoth we bought--but what would be?

Three hours into cooking, the meat was cooked but still a little tough. I decided to hack the shoulder into chunks, to help it along. By four+ hours, I was getting impatient and hauled the thing out of the oven. It was plenty tender, but not tender enough to shred with two forks. Instead, I chopped it up with a big knife, all the while sampling it to make sure it was good. I'm all about quality control.

The magazine calls for using only half a cup of the pan juices. There were at least 2 cups, and it seemed like a real waste to toss it (and the onions, garlic, and peaches within it) because it tasted so rich and porky. So I emulsified the whole mess with a stick blender, added half a cup of brown sugar and the rest of the peaches and peach syrup, and boiled it vigorously for about fifteen minutes. And instead of serving it with sauteed onions and peach jam, I made some slaw with brussels sprouts, because that's what we had.

It was great, but we had pork for days and days. And days. Not complaining, but 8.5 lbs is a lot of pork for two people.

Peach-Braised Pulled Pork, adapted from Saveur

3 tbsp olive oil
3-8 lb boneless pork shoulder
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
4 allspice berries
2 bay leaves
4 cloves garlic, smashed
1 large yellow onion, cut into quarters
2 (12-oz.) bottles beer
1 (1-qt.) jar canned peaches in syrup, drained or use store-bought
1/2 cup brown sugar
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 325°.

Heat oil over medium-high heat in a baking pan or dutch oven large enough to hold your meat.

Season pork with salt and pepper. Brown meat on all sides, about 10–12 minutes. Remove meat from pan and add allspice, bay leaves, garlic, and onion to pan; cook until browned, 6–8 minutes. Add beer; cook, stirring and scraping up browned bits from bottom of pan, until reduced by half, 10–12 minutes.

Return pork to pan and add half the peaches. Bake, covered, until pork is tender and an instant-read thermometer inserted into pork reads 190°, 3–5 hours. Let cool. If pork is tender enough, use two forks to shred the meat, otherwise, chop it with a sharp knife.

Pour two cups of the pan juices, plus any solids (minus bay leaves), into a sauce pan. Puree with a stick blender. Add the remaining peaches and their juice and the brown sugar. Bring mixture to a boil over medium-high heat and cook for fifteen minutes or so. Season with salt and pepper.

Stir chopped meat into the sauce. If you are using a huge shoulder, like we did, save some of the meat for other uses, like pasta sauce.



Posted on Minxeats.com.

Not Quite Nashville Hot Chicken in a Biscuit

There's this thing called Hot Chicken that is popping up here and there, even in Baltimore (at least at KFC). This specialty of Nashville, Tennessee is typically marinated in spices, breaded, fried, and then coated in a cayenne-rich paste or oil. It's red in color and definitely hot.

Spicy hot food releases endorphins, feel-good chemicals that make us want more. At least, those who can tolerate heat. Some people are just crazy with the amount of capsaicin they are willing to ingest. Us, not so much. While we enjoy hot foods, we're not "chileheads" by any stretch of the imagination. So while I did spice up this fried chicken a bit, it's still quite enjoyable by all and sundry. If you are a chilehead, feel free to add more cayenne to the chicken coating and to the sauce. Hell, add it to the biscuit, if you want.

Really, though, this post is more about making dinner with what we had on hand rather than going along with a food fad. I've been really lazy recently, not thinking ahead about what we're going to eat when it's my turn to cook (the weekend). And when Saturday comes, I'm digging through the freezer, hoping we have some good raw materials to work with. Thankfully, we usually do. This time, we had packages of boneless skinless chicken thighs. We also had three sweet potatoes hanging around (Mr Minx doesn't like them particularly) and a bulb of fennel that I had purchased on impulse the week before. I've made hash before with those same ingredients (and it was pretty good) but I hate repeating myself. I thought I could hide one of the sweet potatoes in a batch of biscuits, and fried chicken seemed like a good thing to put in one of those biscuits. With slaw on top, using fennel rather than the typical cabbage.

I have a somewhat embarrassing confession to make: I was a fried chicken virgin until the middle of last year. Oh, I've eaten my fair share over the years, but I'd never cooked it before. I was afraid of making a greasy mess while stinking up the house and ending up with either burnt or raw chicken. Last year, we wrote a book about Maryland cuisine and including a version of Maryland fried chicken was a must. At long last, it was time to get over my fear of frying. I purchased a cast iron skillet.

Maryland fried chicken is shallow-fried, then steamed. It's just as crispy-coated and moistly delicious as deep-fried chicken, only it's not nearly as messy. Or smelly. Once I figured out the proper cooking times (a lot of published recipes don't allow nearly enough time for the coating to brown) and got the technique down, I felt like a chicken frying pro. It was easy, and results were delicious.

If you're a novice, try my recipe. If you don't want spicy chicken, just put some salt and pepper in the flour. Don't worry about buttermilk soaks or egg washes or anything else. Just seasoned flour, chicken, and hot oil. And a cast iron skillet.

Spicy Chicken Biscuit Sandwich with Fennel Slaw
BTW, I used to love those crackers, Chicken in a Biskit, even though they don't taste like chicken nor particularly like biscuits.

For the biscuits:
1 large sweet potato
1/3 cup half and half, plus more
1 3/4 cups AP flour, plus more
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons of cold salted butter, cut into small pieces
Melted butter for brushing tops

For the fennel slaw:
1 large bulb fennel
2 tablespoons finely chopped chives (can use whatever onion you prefer)
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
1 tablespoon unseasoned rice wine vinegar
1-2 teaspoons agave syrup or superfine sugar
Salt and pepper to taste

For the chicken:
6 boneless, skinless, chicken thighs, cut in half
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 - 1 1/2 teaspoons ground black pepper
1/2 - 1 teaspoon cayenne
Fat for frying (lard or vegetable oil, or a combo of the two)

For the sauce:
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
2 or more tablespoons of your favorite hot sauce
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
Pinch salt

To make the biscuits: Peel the potato and cut into 1" chunks. Place in a pan and add water to cover. Bring to a boil over high heat, then turn down to a simmer. Cook for 10-15 minutes, until potatoes are tender. Drain pot and mash potatoes. Pack mashed potato into a measuring cup. You should have one cup of sweet potato. If you have more, eat the rest. Set aside to cool.

Preheat oven to 450°F.

Once sweet potatoes are cool, add the 1/3 cup of half and half to them and stir to combine. Combine the 1 3/4 cups of flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl, stirring well with a fork. Add the butter and combine with your fingers, a pastry blender, or two knives, until mixture resembles coarse meal. Gently fold in the sweet potato, adding a dribble more half and half if the dough seems too stiff, a pinch more flour if it seems too wet.

Flour your hands well and grab small handfuls of the dough. Gently roll into a ball, then flatten into a fat disc. Place discs on a parchment-lined baking sheet--touching if you want soft sides, not touching if you like crispier biscuits. You should be able to get between 9 and 12 biscuits, depending on how big you make them. Brush tops with a little melted butter. Place in preheated oven and bake for 12-18 minutes (depending on how many you made; bigger biscuits need more time), until light golden brown and firm to the touch. Remove biscuits to a wire rack until ready to serve.

To make slaw: You can do this while the sweet potato is boiling. Cut stalks off of bulb, retaining some of the fronds. Rinse well and cut off any discolored bits on the outermost layer. Cut the bulb in half and make a triangular cut at the bottom to cut away the core. Grate the fennel with a hand grater or a food processor. Remove fennel to a large bowl; chop the fronds and add to the rest of the fennel. Add the chives.

In another bowl, combine the mayo, rice wine, and agave syrup or sugar (more or less depending on how sweet you like your slaw). Season with salt and white pepper to taste. Cover and refrigerate until ready to use.

To make chicken: Combine flour with salt and peppers in a plastic zip-top bag. Place the chicken pieces in the bag, one at a time, and shake to coat with flour. Place coated chicken on a plate to rest.

Heat 1/4-inch of fat in a large, heavy-bottomed, frying pan (a cast iron skillet is ideal) over medium-high heat. Put the chicken pieces in the hot fat and cook for about five minutes without disturbing them, until crusty and browned on the bottoms; turn each piece and cook for an additional 5 minutes. Turn the chicken over again, cover the pan partway, turn the heat down to medium, and allow the chicken to steam for 8-10 minutes. A meat thermometer stuck into the meatiest part of the chicken should read no less than 165°F. Remove the cover and cook an additional couple minutes on both sides if it hasn’t browned to your liking.

Drain chicken on paper towel-lined plates. Salt and pepper pieces as soon as they come out of the pan.

To make sauce: combine all ingredients in a small bowl. Refrigerate until ready to use.

To serve: Split biscuits with a fork. Top with a piece of chicken, a dollop of sauce, then a big spoonful of the slaw. Close biscuit and eat. Repeat.



Posted on Minxeats.com.

Pulled Pork with Peaches

The February issue of Saveur magazine has several interesting recipes for peaches, which seems odd when there's snow on the ground. But canned peaches can be just as tasty; indeed the focus of the article was canning. And while I don't do any canning myself, Del Monte, Libby's, etc., does.

When I spotted a relatively inexpensive pork shoulder at the grocery store, I decided we needed to try the peach-braised pulled pork. Once home, I realized the recipe called for a 3 lb boneless shoulder, and we had just purchased one that weighed 8.5 lbs, bone-in. It also called for whole cloves, smoked paprika, and lager beer. We had ground cloves, no paprika, and a couple bottles of my brother-in-law's home brewed ale. So I do what I always do--make substitutions. Allspice works just as well as cloves when it comes to matching with peaches, and as long as the beer wasn't stout, it would be fine. As for the paprika--I could have sworn I had a big bag of it in the cupboard, but I suppose I'll have to order more from Penzey's or the Spice House. There's really no substitute, so I just skipped it completely.

I knew from the get-go that 3 hours wouldn't be enough cooking time for the porky behemoth we bought--but what would be?

Three hours into cooking, the meat was cooked but still a little tough. I decided to hack the shoulder into chunks, to help it along. By four+ hours, I was getting impatient and hauled the thing out of the oven. It was plenty tender, but not tender enough to shred with two forks. Instead, I chopped it up with a big knife, all the while sampling it to make sure it was good. I'm all about quality control.

The magazine calls for using only half a cup of the pan juices. There were at least 2 cups, and it seemed like a real waste to toss it (and the onions, garlic, and peaches within it) because it tasted so rich and porky. So I emulsified the whole mess with a stick blender, added half a cup of brown sugar and the rest of the peaches and peach syrup, and boiled it vigorously for about fifteen minutes. And instead of serving it with sauteed onions and peach jam, I made some slaw with brussels sprouts, because that's what we had.

It was great, but we had pork for days and days. And days. Not complaining, but 8.5 lbs is a lot of pork for two people.

Peach-Braised Pulled Pork, adapted from Saveur

3 tbsp olive oil
3-8 lb boneless pork shoulder
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
4 allspice berries
2 bay leaves
4 cloves garlic, smashed
1 large yellow onion, cut into quarters
2 (12-oz.) bottles beer
1 (1-qt.) jar canned peaches in syrup, drained or use store-bought
1/2 cup brown sugar
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 325°.

Heat oil over medium-high heat in a baking pan or dutch oven large enough to hold your meat.

Season pork with salt and pepper. Brown meat on all sides, about 10–12 minutes. Remove meat from pan and add allspice, bay leaves, garlic, and onion to pan; cook until browned, 6–8 minutes. Add beer; cook, stirring and scraping up browned bits from bottom of pan, until reduced by half, 10–12 minutes.

Return pork to pan and add half the peaches. Bake, covered, until pork is tender and an instant-read thermometer inserted into pork reads 190°, 3–5 hours. Let cool. If pork is tender enough, use two forks to shred the meat, otherwise, chop it with a sharp knife.

Pour two cups of the pan juices, plus any solids (minus bay leaves), into a sauce pan. Puree with a stick blender. Add the remaining peaches and their juice and the brown sugar. Bring mixture to a boil over medium-high heat and cook for fifteen minutes or so. Season with salt and pepper.

Stir chopped meat into the sauce. If you are using a huge shoulder, like we did, save some of the meat for other uses, like pasta sauce.

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Gochujang Burgers

In September, I entered three recipe contests...and I didn't win three recipe contests. One was the Breyer's sundae thing, and another was a burger contest sponsored by Annie Chun's Go-Chu-Jang sauce. The grand prize was a trip to Korea, and while I've always wanted to visit Asia, Korea might not be my first choice. So no harm done.

So here's my losing recipe. It was absolutely delicious; the judges don't know what they're missing. And...I couldn't find that damn Annie Chun brand in my supermarket, so I used real Korean gochujang that I purchased from H Mart.

Korean-style Pork Burgers with Sweet and Sour Cabbage Salad

Burgers:
1.5 lb ground pork
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 Tablespoons gochujang sauce

Salad:
2 cups green cabbage, cut into 1/2" - 1" pieces
1 tablespoon Kosher salt
2 Tablespoons gochujang sauce
1 Tablespoon toasted sesame oil
2 Tablespoons sugar
2 Tablespoons lime juice
2 Tablespoons chopped scallions

Sesame Mayo:
1/4 cup mayonnaise
2 teaspoons minced scallions
1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
1 Tablespoon toasted sesame seeds

Hamburger buns

Combine pork, garlic and gochujang. Form into 6 patties. Refrigerate an hour or until ready to serve.

Make salad:
Place cabbage in a colander set over a bowl. Toss with salt and allow to rest for about 15 minutes. Rinse cabbage well and place into a large bowl. Add gochujang, sesame oil, sugar, lime juice, and scallions and toss well. Refrigerate 1 hour or until ready to serve.

Make mayo:
Combine mayo, scallions, sesame oil, and sesame seeds in a small bowl. Stir until thoroughly combined. Refrigerate until ready to use.

Cook burgers:
Pan fry or grill about 4 minutes per side until cooked through.

To assemble:
On bottom half of hamburger bun, place a tablespoon or so of cabbage salad. Top with burger, then top with a tablespoon of mayo, and top half of bun.