Family Circle Chinese Hacked Pork

You may have noticed a theme lately, crock-pot recipes. My schedule the last couple of months has been crazy. My youngest son is giving new meaning to being a hard to deal with three-year-old. I love him, but he is a handful to say the least. Plus, the fighting between my two boys has risen to new levels. Needless to say mommy has had a lot less time for meal prep and my crock-pot has made my life much easier. It is normally calmer in the morning, some days I even get a little time to myself to enjoy my coffee before the chaos of the day begins. Since my mornings are easier, I love being able to prep dinner and throw it in the slow-cooker until it's time to eat. So I hope everyone loves crock-pot recipes, since I have been making a lot of them in the last couple of months and there will more than likely be many more to come. The April issue of Family Circle magazine had a delicious looking recipe for Chinese Hacked Pork combining Chinese five spice and pork.

This recipe has 12 ingredients. It takes 10 minutes of prep and 6 hours of cooking time and makes 6 servings. I had to make a few modifications to the ingredients due to availability and taste preferences. I was unable to find wide lo mein noodles, so I substituted the chow mein noodles which I was able to find at my local grocery store. Additionally, I chose to leave out the steamed snow peas, I found them unnecessary, and I used homemade chicken broth and regular, instead of low-sodium soy sauce. Since I don't salt my chicken stock I thought the salt from the regular soy sauce was necessary. Finally, I forgot to add the scallions at dinner time, so we ate the dish without. I followed the remainder of the recipe as written.

I really liked this recipe. The flavor was great and the leftovers heated up well both with the noodles and on a bun as a sandwich. My husband especially enjoyed this recipe and ate the majority of the leftovers. The Chinese five spice creates a nice flavor to the dish without being overpowering. Best of all the recipe has 39 grams of protein and only 8 grams of fat, so great for someone on a high-protein diet. This will be a crock-pot recipe that I will use again.

For the recipe go to Chinese Hacked Pork.