Cafe Rio's Sweet Pork Barbacoa

Holy cow this was good.

So I was looking online for a recipe like Cafe Rio's Pork Barbacoa because the salad they have is really good, and I found one.  I had to adjust it slightly, really I just had to adjust the measurements and I had to come to terms with using soda since I haven't had soda in over 17 years.  I'd like to try to find a way to do this again without the soda, if that's possible.

Ingredients

2 lbs pork (okay so maybe I used 5ish pounds of Wegmans' bone in pork shoulder blade roast $1.29 a pound)!

2 cans of coke - not diet (okay so maybe I used two bottles)

1 and 1/2 cups of brown sugar

1/2 tsp garlic salt

1/4 c water

1 four-ounce can diced green chilies 

1 10 or 14 ounce can enchilada sauce (See below)

Okay so this recipe has two steps.  Step one is to marinate the pork.  Mix 1/2 cup of the brown sugar and 1 can of Coke and then marinate it with the pork.  You can marinate it for a few hours or overnight, I did it overnight.  Also, since I used a bottle of Coke I poured in about 2/3 of the bottle.  I put all of this in the crockpot.

Step two is the next day.  Drain the liquid from the crock pot and then pour 1/2 a can of Coke (I did about 1/3 a bottle), water, and garlic salt into the crock pot and cook for 3-4 hours on high.  I did 4 hours and it was fine.  

Pull the pork out and shred the meat.  Again, I cheated and just cut it into chunks.  Empty the crock pot juices and put the pork back in.  In a bowl or blender (I used a blender) mix the other half of the can of Coke (I used 1/3 the bottle), the can of chilies (I used about half a can because I don't like spicy things), 3/4 of the can of enchilada sauce (I used about 3/4 of the 14 ounce can but the original recipe said to use 3/4 of a 14 ounce can - which is about 10 ounces if you get a 10 ounce can), and the last cup of brown sugar.  Pour this mix over the pork and heat it in the crock pot until it is warm.

We made burritos with it (pictured above) and gave some with chips, cheese, and salsa to the neighbor to make nachos.  Next time I'd like to make the salad and I'll be prepared with guacamole.

Our Review

This was good.  The mix in the blender didn't smell anything like what I'd eaten at Cafe Rio so I wasn't very optimistic about it, but once I took the first bite of the meat, I was sold.  It's sweet, and ours really wasn't spicy, probably because I barely used any of the chilies.  We will definitely make this again.

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