BBQ Anytime

Summer may be passing us by, but barbecue food always tastes great.  When the weather gets too dreary for grilling outside (not anywhere near that point in Central California yet) or when you just don’t have the time or possibility to fire up the coals, here’s an indoor casserole with great BBQ flavor.

For the meat, I used a pork shoulder roast, but a different portion (picnic or butt roast, even country style or St. Louis ribs) will work just fine.  First, I put the roast in my pressure cooker, along with some barbecue sauce, a piece of an onion, a few cloves or garlic and a little water for the steam.  I cooked it for about 15-20 minutes after the pressure built up, then waited until I could open the cooker.

Murder, she cooked

In the meantime, in another pot, I boiled a few potatoes in their skin.

When the roast was ready, I pulled it to shreds, as if making pulled pork, using a fork.  Then I mixed all the pieces with even more barbecue sauce – can’t really go wrong there.

Pull apart

Awesomesauce!

Now that everything was ready to go, I started the actual casserole assembly.  First I peeled and sliced the boiled potatoes, and put them down as a first layer.  I gently drizzled them with oil, and spiced them with garlic salt, black and white pepper and paprika.

Potato base

What I missed from here was a layer of sour cream – I’m certain it would’ve made the whole casserole all the better, but for some reason, it skipped my brain.  Duly noted for the next run.

After the (imaginary) layer of sour cream comes all the meat we mixed in with the barbecue sauce.  I topped them off with a generous amount of sweet Fresno onions.  (If you can get your hands on them, they are the best in the world, truly sweet tasting.)

Sweet Fresno onions

I topped off this already glorious casserole with some corn and shredded cheese.  I added some of the braising juices from the pressure cooker to have enough liquid, then put it all in the slow cooker for the longest time setting and lowest heat.  This was really for my own convenience, as almost all ingredients have been cooked, it just needed to all come together; and it had overnight to do so.

The served BBQ casserole

This is probably not one of my prettiest looking recipes, however, it tastes great!  Another mistake I only found out too late was adding too much of the braising juices, which caused my casserole to be more liquid-y than I would’ve preferred, and didn’t cut nicely – but there’s always next time!

Enjoy your meal!