Slow Cooker BBQ Ribs

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For this month’s Secret Recipe Club I had the honor of being paired up with the owner, Sarah of Fantastical Sharing of Recipes.  Sadly, it won’t be a surprise that I had her blog since she sends out the assignments, but hopefully I can surprise her with what recipe I chose from her massive list.

I combed through her recipe index, pausing on Almost White Castle BurgersFauxtisserie ChickenDulce de leche Cheesecake Bars. My husband helped me decide on Slow Cooker BBQ Ribs since we had been craving some ribs and he’s always a sucker for barbecue sauce.

We recently purchased a slow cooker, so have been looking for new ways to use it. Unfortunately, we have the smallest Crock-Pot in existence so we have to be careful when reading recipes. We made ⅓ of the recipe and it fit perfectly into a 3 quart pot. It was hard to find only 2 pounds of ribs but our local grocery store luckily had smaller portions pre-packaged.

These ribs turned out finger-licking-good (literally). The meat fell right off the bone and the charred bits from the broiler were my favorite part. Served with chips or smashed potatoes, I was transported to a outdoor summer picnic (while still sitting in my air-conditioned dining room.

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Slow Cooker Brown Sugar Balsamic Pork Tenderloin

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For this month’s Secret Recipe Club I got fellow Nicole from i am a honey bee. Nicole lives in Boston and has a cute daughter, boston terrier, and bunny. She also likes scrapbooking when not making delicious meals.

I recently got a slow cooker and have been trying to think what to make with it. Honestly, I leave the slow-cooking to my husband since he works from home and will be the one preparing it. He took a look at Nicole’s blog and decided right away on this barbeque-style pork tenderloin.

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We served this pork drizzled with the liquid remaining in the pot along with some spinach and curried quinoa. This pork was a tiny bit dry but adding sauce cured it immediately. The tenderloin pulled apart effortlessly and we quickly ate the leftovers on sandwiches later in the week.

It also held up great when packed for a bento lunch. Like I do with pasta and sometimes rice, I sprinkled a little water on the pork when re-heating so that it wouldn’t dry out. And of course I was sure to drizzle some extra ‘juice’ in when I was packing it up the night before.

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Check out Nicole’s blog for other great posts, including homemade cheez-its, slow cooker roast chicken, biscoff muddy buddies, s’mores chex mix, and everything bagel pretzel bites.

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