r/slowcooking

I'm planning on putting it in the oven at 250 for ~ 4 hours. Will that work for pulled pork. Longer? Shorter?

but should I trim the fat and skin off this pork butt before putting it in the crockpot?

So to start off, because I've gotten noise about this elsewhere, I call this chili. It's OK with me if you don't. I don't care.

I call it chili for the same reason a toddler calls every animal they meet a cat, because that's the only thing I know to call it. What I'm looking for isn't validation on my names, but help figuring out options.

To start of the year I decided to start making homemade chili instead of purchasing cans of it.

What I've come up with works pretty well for me, I enjoy eating it and it's checks pretty much all the requirements off my checklist.

• 246g Pinto Beans
• 216g Black Beans
• 100g dry TVP
• 60g vegetable oil
• 1 can diced tomatos and chilies
• 1 can enchilada sauce
• 20g beef bullion powder
• 10g garlic powder
• 10g onion powder
• 10g chipotle powder
• 10g other chilie powder
• 20g cumin powder
• 10g paprika powder

I add it all to a 4.5 qt crockpot fill the pot to the brim with water and give it a little stir. Then I set pot to high and let it go for 24 hours.

And what comes out is four 'servings' of this. Which as I mentioned I enjoy very much. A single bowl hits pretty much all my macro requirements for the day other than calories, which lets me play fast and loose with the remainder of my 'food budget' for the day.

But... I'm looking to see if I can't alter it a bit, so I've come here for help.

First, if you look at the picture I posted, the chili is very bean forward and very little liquid or sauce and I'm interesting in bringing it closer to something like this.

• One thing I'm wondering if I'm putting in too many beans, my family didn't really make chili when I was a kid and when I ask around they all use canned beans to make theirs. But it sounds like most of them use just a single can of beans for their chili, which if I understand the conversions right, is about half the amount of beans I'm using.
• I'm also wondering if it would help to try mixing in a corn masa slurry about 20 min or so before I turn the pot off and start portioning out the chili.

If I combined the two above without changing anything else, would I be looking at bean soup or hopefully something more closer to the 'ideal' picture I posted?

Second, I'm using TVP not because I'm adverse to using real meat, but because before everything *gestures around* happened this year, I used to be able to get a 2 pound bag of dry TVP for about $10, which converts to about 4-6 pounds of rehydrated TVP. Making it far more affordable than the $6 a pound beef I have access to.

Unfortunately lately the prices have skyrocketed to the point where it still isn't as expensive as beef but is more expensive than other ground meat. So I've been looking at trying to swap it out with real meat.

The next cheapest alternative for me looks to be bog standard pork sausage in a tube. I know that if I used beef in the chili, cooking it for 24 hours would effectively disintegrate it (which TBH is what I'm looking for).

But what about pork?

Really the only experience I have with pork has been as a child were overcooked, harder than a hocky puck breakfast sausages that tasted more like 10 year old black pepper than pork. I know it has a reputation for being tougher than beef. Would I need to actually figure out a way to 'break it up' before putting it in the pot, or is it a case where pretty much anything I throw in at high for 24 hours is going to break down on it's own?