I’ll admit it. I’m a huge sucker for Chinese take out. The little white boxes full of heaping warm food, the fortune cookies, the chop sticks. It’s all incredibly delicious. It’s all also, unfortunately, pretty unhealthy. So for that reason we typically take a pass. Also? There just isn’t a spot close by that we love and it’s rare I can convince M to drive 40 minutes for take out. For some reason my Dad never had an issue with this when my mom or any of us girls asked him. God bless that man.
Anyways…so, where does that leave us. Unhealthy and inconvenient. Not a good combo. Enter this recipe.
It is good. And painfully easy. Repeat after me ‘I can do this in 5 minutes.’ You place your meat in the crock pot, pour over your awesome homemade marinade, and go about your day.
Then when dinner time rolls around you heat up some already prepared rice (brown or white), courtesy of Trader Joes, fry up some sugar snap peas and voila! You have a beautiful, convenient, and healthy Asian dinner.
How does it taste? Well, to quote M: ‘this is the best thing I have ever eaten.’ Can’t get a much better critique than that.
Make this.


- 1/2 cup low sodium soy sauce
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 1 to 2 TBS asian chili garlic sauce
- 1 TBS freshly grated ginger
- 1 tsp Chinese five spice powder (optional)
- 2 1/2 lbs boneless pork shoulder, cut into 2 inch pieces (have your butcher do this!)
- scallions, sliced, for serving
- In a slow cooker, combine all the ingredients up until the meat. Whisk together.
- Season your pork with salt and pepper and place in the slow cooker. Toss to coat.
- Cook, covered, until the pork is tender. On high for 4-5 hours, on low for 7-8 hours.
- Serve topped with scallions with rice and your choice of a crisp green veggie.
I hope you just wrote down these ingredients for you shopping list!
Courtney