Lowcarbezine!

Stewed Pork Neckbones with Turnips and Cabbage

This week's recipe is what happens to be in my slow cooker this very minute. It's a cool, rainy day as I finish up this issue, and I couldn't think of a darned thing that sounded better than this simple dish. I found the prototype for this recipe on a website dedicated to soul food cookery, and simply substituted turnips for the potatoes to slash the carb count, and adapted if for the slow cooker, rather than stove top cooking.

About Pork Neckbones

Unless you grew up on soul food, you may never have tried pork neck bones. They're one of those cuts that are perfect for the slow cooker - they're bony and tough, and darned cheap; my grocery store has them for 59c a pound week in and week out. Yet cooked with slow moist heat, they're incredibly flavorful, and since the meat falls right off the bone, who cares that they're bony?

I did have one teeny problem with pork neck bones: I simply could not find any nutritional statistics for them, and I even wrote a big pork producer! However, you can count on them being carb free, and these carb counts as accurate; it's the protein and calorie counts that I couldn't get.

Stewed Pork Neckbones with Turnips and Cabbage

This one pot meal is not a beautiful dish to look at, but boy, does it taste good! Plenty of Tabasco is essential.

3 turnips, diced
3 pounds meaty pork neck bones
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 1/2 teaspoons salt, or Vege-Sal
3 cups water
1/2 head cabbage, cut in wedges
Tabasco sauce

Put the turnips in the bottom of the pot. Put the neck bones on top of them. Sprinkle the red pepper and salt or Vege-Sal over it, then pour the water over that. Now arrange the cabbage wedges on top of that. Cover the pot, set to low, and cook for 7, 8 hours.

Scoop everything out onto a platter together with a slotted spoon, and dose it well with Tabasco before serving.

4 Servings, each with: 6g Carbohydrate; 2g Dietary Fiber; 4g Usable Carbs.

(Reprinted with permission from 200 Low-Carb Slow Cooker Recipes (http://tinyurl.com/jz322) by Dana Carpender, copyright 2005, Fair Winds Press)

Posted by HoldTheToast at April 26, 2006 09:03 PM