pork butt

A new year full of possibilities and quandaries lies before us. If you’re trying to figure out how to feed yourself and your family more home-cooked, tasty, local meals without breaking the bank, purchasing a myriad of strange ingredients, or spending hours in the kitchen, keep reading.

As Mother Nature has decreed it, the start of the New Year in Minnesota is always a cold one. For me, a salad just doesn’t hold the same appeal this time of year as a hot, hearty meal, so I'm getting reaquainted with my slow cooker. Also known as a Crock Pot®, the slow cooker is not a sexy kitchen appliance. But what it may lack in pizzazz it more than makes up for in its ability to do all sorts of heavy lifting, transforming simple ingredients into something far greater than the sum of its parts, all while you’re off doing something else.

Porketta is one of those recipes that you shove in the oven and forget about. The meat emerges tender and succulent. It serves a bunch of people, and the leftovers – sliced high and piled on crusty baguette, or slathered with bbq sauce on a soft, whole wheat bun, or diced and simmered in ragu for pasta – make things easy on the cook.

It’s one of those recipes that came to the Iron Range with Italian miners, was adopted by Czech neighbors and Norwegian farmers, and is now found on menus throughout the Twin Cities (and given an uptempo spin).