Portuguese Pulled Pork (Caçoila)

Labor Day weekend was the quietest weekend our house has had in a year, and I want to write about it because I have decided that the quiet weekends are the ones worth putting down on paper, because they are the ones that disappear if you do not.

The schedule first, because the schedule is what made the weekend work. Mama got Monday off — the new district policy at Dollar General gives you one weekend day a month, and Mama had a holiday Monday available, and she scheduled it. Cody had no GED class because the community college shut for the holiday. I had a short Sonic shift, eleven to two on Monday, and I was home by two-thirty. The three of us were in the house together from two-thirty Monday afternoon through bedtime, with no scheduled obligations, for the first time I can remember in a year.

I want to write that down again because it is the kind of fact that is easy to lose. The three of us were in the house together with no scheduled obligations for the first time in a year. A year ago this Labor Day, Daddy was still here and Cody was just starting to skip school and Mama was working a closing shift on Labor Day because Dollar General did not give holiday off then. A year ago we were not the household we are now. A year ago we were the household that was about to come apart, and last weekend we were the household putting itself back together, and the two are not the same thing said with different verbs. They are different households. I am writing in the new one.

I made Portuguese pulled pork in the slow cooker. The recipe is from Family Circle, the same magazine that has fed me half my recipes this summer, and it is a recipe I had been holding for three weeks because I wanted to make it for an occasion. Labor Day was the occasion. The recipe is what the Portuguese-American kitchens of New England call Caçoila, which is a pork shoulder braised low and slow in red wine vinegar, smoked paprika, garlic, bay leaves, and a few warm spices, until the meat is shreddable and the cooking liquid has reduced to a sharp tangy sauce that you spoon over the meat on a roll.

The math first. The pork shoulder was $2.49 a pound on the Walmart markdown rack, three pounds, $7.47, marked down because it was a day from sell-by. Red wine vinegar from the same bottle I have been working through since the Greek salad dressing in April, about eighty cents’ worth. Smoked paprika, dollar-fifty for the small jar I bought at the Aldi spice section last week specifically for this recipe (the most exotic spice purchase I have made this year). A whole head of garlic from the bulb on the counter, free. Bay leaves from the spice rack, free. A bag of twelve dollar-store dinner rolls, $1.00. Total: about $11.00. The slow cooker fed three of us for two dinners and a leftovers lunch, which works out to $1.22 a serving, which is the kind of math that justifies a holiday.

The technique is the slow cooker doing the work overnight. Sunday at eight in the evening I cubed the pork shoulder into two-inch chunks. I tossed it with the smoked paprika, salt, pepper, and minced garlic in the slow cooker insert. I poured in a half-cup of red wine vinegar and a cup and a half of water. I dropped in three bay leaves. I put the lid on. I set the slow cooker to low. I went to bed.

The smell of pork-and-paprika-and-vinegar that comes out of a slow cooker around hour eight is one I am not going to forget. I came into the kitchen at six in the morning to make coffee for Mama before her shift — she still works most Sundays even with the holiday Monday off — and the kitchen smelled the way I imagine the kitchens in the magazine pictures smell when they take the photographs. Smoky and rich and a little sharp and a little sweet, all at once. Mama came into the kitchen in her work polo to grab her coffee and she stopped in the doorway and she said, baby, what have you done, and I said, just leave it on, Mama, it’s for tomorrow.

The pork was done by noon Monday. The meat fell apart with two forks. I shredded it back into the cooking liquid so the strands could soak up the sauce, and I left it on the warm setting for the rest of the afternoon. The sauce had reduced to about half its volume and turned a deep brown-red, sharp and spicy and round the way I now realize a long-cooked vinegar sauce can be.

I made coleslaw Sunday morning from a bag of pre-shredded coleslaw mix at Aldi, $1.29, with three tablespoons of mayo, a tablespoon of cider vinegar, two teaspoons of sugar, salt, pepper. It sat in the fridge until Monday afternoon, getting better by the hour. Mama made sweet tea on Monday morning the way her mama taught her: a gallon pitcher, twelve regular tea bags, two cups of sugar dissolved in while the tea was hot, ice cubes after.

We ate at four-thirty in the afternoon, which was an unusual time but felt right because the holiday was operating on its own clock. Pulled pork piled high on dollar-store rolls. Coleslaw on the side. A pitcher of sweet tea on the porch railing. The three of us sat on the back porch in the folding chairs, the same three folding chairs we had sat in for the Mother’s Day dinner and the Saturday-afternoon Cody-came-home moment, and the air had finally dropped to the high seventies and the porch was usable for the first time in three months.

The honeysuckle, which had died on the fence in July from the heat, has come back in a small late-season bloom this week that surprised everybody. The yard smelled like honeysuckle. The light was the long Labor Day light, gold across the lawn, the kind of light that makes everything in your peripheral vision look like a photograph.

Cody talked more at the porch dinner than he has talked in a year. He told me about a guy in his GED class named Marcus who is forty-seven and trying to get the GED so he can apply for a forklift operator job at the Tulsa distribution center. He told Mama about the GED math and how the algebra is hard but the reading comprehension is easy. And then, without looking at either of us, looking out at the magnolia tree, he said, I think I’m going to take the test in November.

Mama did not say anything for a second. She took a drink of her sweet tea. She set the glass down on the porch rail. Then she said, very quietly, I will be there. And Cody said, okay. And that was the conversation. He did not need her to say more. She did not need him to either. The two of them, on the porch, on Labor Day, in the late-season honeysuckle, said three sentences to each other and the three sentences contained more than I have ever seen them say in a single afternoon.

We sat on the porch until the sun went down. Cody played some Hank Williams Junior on the small Bluetooth speaker he bought himself with his refund check from the GED program, and Mama hummed along, and the dinner went around for seconds, and we did not say anything important after that because the important things had already been said and the rest of the evening was just the holding of them.

I am writing this on Tuesday morning before school. The Labor Day weekend is over. The Sonic shift is this afternoon. Cody’s GED class is tonight. The pulled pork is in the fridge in two containers, labeled Tuesday and Wednesday. The savings envelope is at $84. The wallet is at $107. The composition book is on the kitchen counter. The honeysuckle is still on the fence. The household, last weekend, was the household I have been hoping for.

I am writing this and I want to keep it close. Some weekends are the kind you want to mark.

The recipe is below, the way A Family Feast wrote it. Buy a pork shoulder on the markdown rack — the cheap cut is the right cut for this. Use real smoked paprika, not regular paprika; it is the spice that makes the dish. Slow-cook overnight on low. Pile the meat on dollar-store rolls. Eat it on a porch with the people you love. Some recipes are not really about the recipe. This one is one of them.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 8 hours | Total Time: 8 hours 15 minutes | Servings: 8

Ingredients

3 lbs pork shoulder (bone-in or boneless), cut into 2-inch chunks
1 cup dry red wine (or beef broth as a substitute)
1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes, with juices
1 medium yellow onion, sliced
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons tomato paste
2 teaspoons sweet paprika
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes (adjust to taste)
2 bay leaves
1 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
Portuguese rolls or crusty bread, for serving

Instructions

Season the pork. Place the pork chunks in a large bowl. Add the paprikas, cumin, red pepper flakes, salt, and black pepper. Toss to coat the meat evenly.
Layer the crockpot. Spread the sliced onion across the bottom of your slow cooker. Add the seasoned pork on top, then scatter in the garlic and bay leaves.
Add the liquids. Whisk together the red wine, diced tomatoes, and tomato paste in a small bowl, then pour the mixture over the pork. The liquid should come about halfway up the meat — don’t submerge it completely.
Cook low and slow. Cover and cook on LOW for 8 hours, or on HIGH for 4 to 5 hours, until the pork is completely tender and pulls apart easily with a fork.
Shred the pork. Remove the bay leaves. Use two forks to shred the pork directly in the slow cooker, stirring it into the cooking juices. Taste and adjust salt as needed.
Serve. Pile the pulled pork onto Portuguese rolls or thick-cut crusty bread. Spoon extra cooking juices over the top. Serve immediately.

Nutrition (per serving)

Portuguese Pulled Pork (Caçoila) — The Labor Day Slow-Cooker That Held the Whole Weekend