What's a Crock Pot?

I decided I'd give myself a treat for Christmas - yet another appliance that will most likely end up collecting dust in my already cramped kitchen: a Crock Pot.
The great thing about it is that you can sling in a bunch of meat, spices and water at 8 AM on a Sunday, set it and forget it, then, at lunch time, you've got tender, flavorful meat that you can serve and eat immediately and leave simmering all day long. I love the idea of being able to walk away from something and the work continuing to get done.

I dreamed of making BBQ hash, ribs, chili, vegetable stew, cube steak... and maybe even venturing out and trying to find some wild game to spice things up... some rabbit, or fowl, or deer... or a Spanish favorite: boar.  And bull's tail (kinda like our ox tail stew, but with a little cinnamon).

In my case, I like to make a big batch of whatever, and spend all day Sunday reading and watching TV, and getting a little plate of what I've made every so often.

When I first had the idea, I realized that I didn't know how to say "Crock Pot" in Spanish. So I looked it up on http://www.WordReference.com, and it said "olla eléctrica" and "olla lenta". Armed with this information, I did a couple searches and found that El Corte Inglés and Media Markt had a few models... at least on their website. When I went in person, I was disappointed to find that most of what they had was a modified bread maker with a capacity of about 1/2 gallon. These dinky machines were no match for my American-sized meals.

I finally found a variation on a paella maker made by Paulsen. It's a rectangular pan about 4 inches deep, 10 inches wide and 20 inches long with a capacity of about 7 quarts (I'm guestimating all of this since I'm having to convert from metric to 'Merican). It's got a teflon non-stick surface and a glass lid.

There was another big difference - it doesn't have the typical controls of a Crock Pot ("Off", "Lo", "Hi"). It's got a thermostat where you dial in the temperature and it maintains it. So I had to find the right temperatures for different dishes through trial and error. I made one batch of chewy chicken curry and one batch of decent Coca-Cola BBQ ribs.

Finally, I found the magic number.
Falls apart in the spoon.

Ryan's SC BBQ Hash

4 pounds stew pork
two onions, chopped
1 cup chicken broth
secret herbs and spices
2 tablespoons of vegetable oil

Sautee onions in vegetable oil at 120ºC until golden brown
Lower temp to 65ºC
Add remaining ingredients
Add water until it almost covers the pork, leaving the top exposed to the air
Cover and let cook for 4-8 hours, stirring occasionally
Scoop out, draining liquid
Break up into strips

Serve on a toasted hamburger bun with mustard-based BBQ sauce, cole slaw and a pickle

I'm still working on my homemade mustard-based BBQ sauce recipe... more on that to come...