Root Beer Baby Back Ribs

If you click on my "Cooking with Soda" tag, you'll see I've often done pork roasts and/or beef roasts with Sprite or cola or root beer. But over the last year or 2, I've been using root beer to help finish off my pork rib recipe.  I start by following this recipe all the way through the dry rub and instant pot cooking (I'm not an instant pot freak, but I use it when it can be helpful).  But then when it says to finish under the broiler, I jump outside to my grill instead. 

I add some BBQ sauce and a little honey, and I get just a little char forming on both sides (I like just a little char). And then I douse it all in a little root beer.

Here was the scene last night when I did some ribs for supper:

Root beer ready to help finish these ribs.

Pouring on a little extra sweetness.

Root beer pooling on the "bone" side of the ribs. It stayed nicely, and I closed the lid for a few minutes.

After grilling both sides, I wrapped it tight with foil and poured some extra root beer in there as well.

Back in the house, I opened it after 45 mins after it absorbed some juices/BBQ/root beer.
The dry rub is tasty, and the root beer adds to it! Ready to fall off the bone.

A meal of root beer ribs, cheesy garlic bread, jalapeño poppers, and apples. NICE!

My boys like this a lot too! We had 2.5 lbs of ribs, and we had 0 left overs.

Making Boxed Cake Mixes with Soda

I've heard about this before, but finally looked more into it over Christmas when talking with family. Did you know that you can mix sodas with cake mix for a TASTY cake?!?

From AllRecipes.com:

Why does this unusual combination work? The leavening agents in the cake mixes still do their duty, even without oil or egg. The soda is all the liquid you need to turn the powdery mix into a bake-able batter. Combine, pour into cake pans, and the mixture will act just like any other cake batter.

But before you think this is some TikTok experiment or Pinterest hack, you should know this method has been around for decades. Old-fashioned cookbooks are filled with soda-meets-cake-mix recipes that were highly fashionable at the time. 

They say that you just use the pan size, oven temp, and baking time on the box, but just add the soda instead of anything else. I HAVE to try this.

Pulled Pork Root Beer Sliders

This past weekend, I defrosted a big pork roast. I threw it in the crock pot with some seasoning salt, an onion (fresh from my Mom's garden), and most of a bottle of Frostie Root Beer. (We had an extra bottle left from the 4-pack of Frostie my wife bought me back in July.)

After about 3 hours on high, I took out the pork, trimmed off the fat, saved the liquid and onions, and shredded the meat.  Here's what it looked like when it was done, with the extra liquid on the bowl at the back, and the fat on the tray:

My wife and boys made some wheat rolls, and also some coleslaw with a cabbage from my Mom (her last of the year). So I made pulled pork root beer sliders with coleslaw for supper:

The great thing about doing it this way is you can add just as much liquid back as you'd like. So you can make it juicy and sloppy, or drier and cleaner. We leaned a bit towards the sloppy side. So good!!

 

Pork Roast a la Sprite

About a week ago, I got a small pork roast on sale. I used a half bottle of flat Sprite we'd had in our fridge for the last 2 weeks (from when my kindergartner was sick) to sweeten up the roast:

About 8 oz of Sprite, a 1.5 lb roast, some seasoning salt, and
an onion on top. Ready to cook for about 3 hours on high.

My 5-year-old ate it as fast as I could shred it!

Being that went over so well, I picked up a handful of pork roasts. A few days ago, I made 2 of those 1.5 lb roasts in the crock pot.  Again, I added Sprite (about 12 oz), seasoning salt, and 2 onions:

Just after pouring the Sprite - lots of carbonation.

After about 3 hours on high and 2 hours on low, here's the chunks of roast ready to be shredded.

I added some (but FAR from all) of the juice/Sprite mixture back in after shredding everything.

These meals go over well with my boys! If you haven't tried soda in roast, give it a shot in your slow cooker!

Lift Bridge Root Beer Pork Roast

Over the weekend, I made a pork roast in the crock pot. And I sweetened it up with root beer:

A roast split in half, with an onion and season on top. Ready for some root beer!

With most of that can of root beer added.

After 4 hours on high, it was tender and pulled apart well. I saved the onions and juice, shredded the meat, put the meat back in the crock, and added back about half the liquid until it was moist enough. Tasty and sweet!

Slow Cooker BBQ Pork with Coke

We got an Instant Pot for Christmas, and I've used it 4 times so far. The first thing I did was use it as a slow cooker when I made some BBQ pulled pork. Their recipe for it was simple: just a roast, some BBQ sauce, and a can of Coke:

Looks gross now: just pork, Coke, and BBQ sauce.

Shredded 8 hours later, with about half the juice/sauce added back in.

I should have used a few herbs and some onions like I usually use in roasts, but the Coke added some nice sweetness. Not too bad. Now I'll be trying a Pad Thai recipe in the Instant Pot tonight!

Pulled Pork with Root Beer

Earlier today, we made a pork roast with root beer. We bought a fatty shoulder butt roast from Target. WE USUALLY DO A PORK LOIN, AND WE SHOULD HAVE STUCK WITH THAT - THIS BUTT ROAST WAS SO FATTY THAT IT WAS A LOT OF WORK. Oh well. Now we know.

This butt roast was $4 off because it was about to expire. So a 4.5 lb roast for $7.

In the crockpot.

Covered in seasoning salt and an onion. About to be doused in root beer.

In goes a bottle of root beer. 

I cooked it on low for about 2 hours, and then on high for about 2 more hours. So 4 hours later, it looked like this:

Ugly, fatty, but tasty!

Shredded pork back in the crock, fat chucks in upper left of jelly roll pan,
shredding meat in the middle, and juices with onions in the bowl to the right.

The fatty roast was a pain to shred. I put all the shredded pork back in the crock, cut up about 3/4 of the onions and added them, and poured in 1/2 to 3/4 of the liquid. I also added some salt and a little more seasoning. After 30 more minutes on low, it was juicy and flavorful:

Finished root beer pork roast!

Like I mentioned at the top, we should have done this with a loin as we've done in the past. This shoulder butt roast was a bit too fatty and much more work. In the past we made a loin much like this with root beer, and once we made BBQ root beer pulled pork that was tasty too.

Root Beer Pulled Pork

This past weekend, I made an easy, tasty meal with some root beer. It required 4 ingredients and a crockpot:

The 4 ingredients: pork loin, seasoning, an onion, and root beer.

Pork with seasoning, onion, and root beer in the crockpot.

After 2 hours on high.

After 4 hours on high.

Pork 4.5 hours later.

The juices after 4.5 hours. It had no sweetness, and was very savory. The aftertaste had a hint of root beer.

Shredding the pork, with a pile of fat at the upper right, and the onions in the middle of the top - I had to
cut up the onions so my 3-year-old would eat them.

Shredded with all but about 1 cup of the liquid mixed back in.  We've found it to be too juicy if all the liquid is used.

It's really that easy. I added more seasoning to the pull pork when I put it back in the crockpot for another half hour because a lot of the seasoning that I originally put on the pork came off with all the fat I cut off while shredding. Try this some day!

- pork
- bottle/can of root beer
- 1 cut up onion
- seasoning to taste

Add all ingredients together, and cook until meat is done. (Roughly 3-4 hours on high, 5-8 hours on low.)  Take out pork and shred. Reserve some of the liquid, and add the shredded pork and most of the liquid back to the crockpot. Add more seasoning if desired, as well as however much liquid you'd like. Cook on low for another 30 minutes. Eat.

Root Beer BBQ Pork

My brother-in-law is a meat cutter, and he's made a number of roasts with different sodas - we often use 7-Up. On Monday, we made a pork roast with root beer. I used some Triple XXX Root Beer because I had a bottle last year and knew it was pretty good stuff. (I got a 12 pack of fun sodas from my parents earlier this year for my birthday, and she had some Triple XXX in there, so I used that bottle for this roast.)

Triple XXX Root Beer along with a 4+ lb pork roast covered in seasoning and onions.

Just 2 seconds after pouring the entire bottle of root beer over the roast - notice the head at the top and to the left.

I made all that Sunday night, put it in the fridge like that until Monday around noon, and then put it in the crockpot so it'd be ready by suppertime on Monday night.

After about 5 hours on high in the crockpot.

Drained, shredded, and warm.

With some of the "root beer juice" added back, along with some BBQ sauce.

It doesn't taste STRONG of root beer. But when I was shredding it, I ate some pieces that were a little extra dark, had a slightly "carmely" root beer taste.

It's that simple: some seasoning, an onion, and a bottle of root beer over a pork loin in a crockpot until tender. Then drain, shred, add back some of the liquid, and add some BBQ sauce. Try it out sometime!