Slow-Cooked Pork Tacos With Brown Sauce Salsa, Slaw & Pickled Onions
Bacon and brown sauce are the best of friends, and unsurprisingly so considering the sauce’s key ingredients which generally work so well with pork. Although sales have reportedly dwindled over the past few years, brown sauce has been popular for decades, with the leading brand, HP sauce, created by Nottingham grocer Frederick Gibson Garton in 1895. Having heard the restaurants in the Houses of Parliament had begun serving it, Garton named the sauce HP and sold the recipe to Edwin Samson Moore for £150 (which would amount to around £20,000 today, considering inflation).
Featuring a blend of spices, vinegar, and fruits such as apple, dates, and tomato, brown sauce’s decline in popularity may be due to most modern meals being flavourful enough to make condiments redundant, though HP sauce remains a useful store cupboard ingredient, particularly for dishes such as Shepherd’s Pie or corned beef hash. The sauce’s elements of fruit, spice, and acidity are also lent well to salsa. So, inspired by my second favourite condiment (after hot sauce), this brown sauce salsa recipe takes some of the sauce’s base ingredients and reworks them, with the addition of chilli and plenty of lime juice to bring that trademark acidity.
The brown sauce salsa also works especially well with slow-cooked pork tacos. This particular recipe features shoulder of pork that’s marinated overnight with hot sauce, orange juice, and lime juice; cooked slowly and accompanied by quick pickled red onions and a simple slaw made with thinly-sliced red cabbage, carrot, spring onion, and mayonnaise spiked with hot sauce. As for the tacos, there’s nothing quite like a homemade corn taco, but flour tortillas also work fine if need be.
While the recipe has various processes and takes a while to cook, most of the cooking and marinating time is inactive, and the overall dish is worth every second. The recipe also yields a good amount of leftover pork, which is delicious in quesadillas, sandwiches, or just on its own with a dollop of brown sauce salsa.
Slow-cooked pork tacos with slaw and pickled red onionsrecipe
Slow-cooked pork tacos with slaw and pickled red onions
Course Main Course
Keyword Pork, Slaw, Tacos
Prep Time 15 minutesminutes
Cook Time 4 hourshours
Total Time 4 hourshours15 minutesminutes
Servings 4
Author Jon Hatchman
Ingredients
12-16corn tortillas
2kgrindless shoulder of porkcut into 12 pieces
1red onionroughly chopped
For the marinade
3garlic clovescrushed
4tbsphot sauceI like a mixture of Cholula, Habanero, and Ancho chilli
4tbsptomato purée
3orangesjuiced
3limesjuiced
4tbspwhite wine vinegar
1tbspdried oregano
1tbspground allspice
1tbspground cumin
2tspground nutmeg
1tspground cloves
For the slaw
½red cabbagethinly sliced
1large carrotgrated
3spring onionsfinely sliced
Handful fresh corianderto taste
Mayonnaiseto taste, approx. 250ml
Hot sauceto taste, approx. 50ml
1tbspwhite wine vinegar
For the pickled onions
2red onionsthinly sliced
2tbspwhite wine vinegar
2tbspcaster sugar
Instructions
Prepare the pork and roughly chop one red onion, then add to a large, non-reactive bowl with all of the marinade ingredients. Mix and place in the fridge to marinade overnight, or for at least 8 hours.
Heat oven to 160C/Gas 3 and transfer the pork and marinade to a casserole dish. Cover with a lid and place in the oven for 4 hours, until the pork is tender but isn’t too giving. Break up with kitchen tongs and move to a serving bowl.
While the pork is cooking, make the slaw by adding the red cabbage, grated carrot, sliced spring onions, and chopped coriander to a large mixing bowl. Add a tablespoon of white wine vinegar and mix.
Mix the mayonnaise with enough hot sauce to produce a liquid with a similar colour to Marie Rose sauce. Mix with the other slaw ingredients and chill in the fridge for at least an hour.
At this point, make the brown sauce salsa (recipe below).
To make the pickled onions, put the sliced red onions in a heatproof bowl. Cover with boiled water and leave to stand for 10 minutes. Drain, then stir in the vinegar and caster sugar. Stand for at least 10 minutes before serving.
Warm the tacos in a frying pan and serve with the pork, slaw, pickled onions, brown sauce salsa, and plenty of napkins.
8sprigsfresh corianderleaves and stalks finely chopped
3limesjuiced
½tspcinnamon
½tsppaprika
30gdark brown sugar
1 ½tbsptreacle
A splash chilli vinegaror malt vinegar
1tbsptamarind paste
1tspWorcester sauce
1tspmustard powder
Pinchsea salt
1tbspoilfor frying
Instructions
Add the juice of three limes to a mixing bowl with 200g chopped tomatoes, ½ chopped onion, 35g chopped dates, ½ chopped apple, chopped green chilli, and coriander. Set aside.
In a medium sauce pan, add a splash of oil and fry the remaining tomato, onion, dates and apple for five minutes until lightly caramelised.
Add the cinnamon, paprika, sugar, treacle, vinegar, tamarind paste, Worcester sauce, and mustard powder, cover with a lid and cook over a low heat for one hour, stirring often.
Once cooked, drain and reserve the liquid. Allow to cool, then slowly stir into the raw tomato, onion, date, apple, and chilli mixture. Season with a good pinch of salt, taste for seasoning. Add a little more vinegar or salt before serving, if necessary
Jonathan is Food Editor for The London Economic.
Jonathan has run and contributed towards a number of blogs, and has written features for publications such as Eater London, The Guardian, i News, The Independent, GQ, Time Out London and more.