Slow Cooked Pork Burrito Bowls

Who doesn’t love burritos?  Lose the high sodium tortilla and you can have a really great burrito bowl with the added bonus of being super adaptable for different diets.  I keep my serving low-calorie by minimizing the rice & beans, and salt eaters can simply add cheese, salsa, olives, or even guacamole.  Because it is so easy to adapt from plate to plate, I keep this recipe tucked away in my back pocket and pull it out when I need to cook for a group.

For starters, I used SkinnyTaste‘s Slow Cooked Sweet Barbacoa Pork as a base for this recipe.  And if I haven’t mentioned SkinnyTaste yet, let me take a moment to tell you how awesome her recipes are.  They are delicious and low-calorie, and although they are not low sodium, they do tend to use fresh ingredients rather than canned or processed.  As you are probably able to guess, this makes the recipes much more adaptable for the low sodium diet.  Using fresh flavorful ingredients instead of super salty processed foods as the foundation for a meal makes adapting recipes much, much easier.  So if you have not checked out SkinnyTaste yet – do it!

If you look closely, you will notice that I use the Slow Cooked Sweet Barbacoa Pork, but I make a few slight changes.   The only one that I will mention specifically here is the sugar.  I omit some (but not all) of the brown sugar in the recipe.  This is a habit with low sodium adaptations, because the salt really balances the sugar.  I have found that if I leave the full amount of sugar while omitting the added salt, it is just a bit too sweet for my taste.  I do this with other recipes as well, so consider this a tiny cooking tip from yours truly.

This starts with the pork tenderloin in a slow cooker with some cola, garlic powder and pepper.  When it is tender, you can shred it like we did with the chicken in the Creamy Jalapeno Popper Chicken Dip.

Then you will put the meat back into the empty crock pot along with a sauce that you’ll make from canned chipotle peppers, tomato sauce, Fire Roasted Green Chiles, and other yummy ingredients.  I do want to take a moment for a couple of quick side notes here.  First, I used canned chipotle peppers here, but they are awfully high in sodium so I sometimes use my own homemade chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, which I make and can a couple of times each year.  One of these days I will make them and post the recipe for them so that you can make them if you are feeling ambitious.  Second, I call for Fire Roasted Green Chiles in this recipes, but you can use fresh if you prefer.  Just make sure to chop the green chiles finely and then leave yourself some extra time to cook the sauce. It will probably need an extra hour to cook the raw green chiles.

The meat is the star of this dish, but it goes great served on a bed of lettuce topped with black beans, rice, avocado, fresh tomatoes, sour cream, and all the other fixings.  Like I said, this recipe is super adaptable, so be creative and enjoy!

Slow Cooked Pork Burrito Bowls

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SODIUM COUNT: 156 mg per serving; 624 mg in the entire batch

• Prep Time: 45 minutes
• Total Time: 45 minutes
• Yield: 4 Servings 1x

Ingredients

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Step 1 – Pork:

• 1.25 pounds pork tenderloin ((trimmed))
• 1/8 tsp garlic powder
• 3 oz diet cola*
• 2 Tbsp brown sugar ((packed))
• 2 Tbsp water

Step 2 – Sauce:

• 4 oz diet cola*
• 2 fire roasted green chilis ((chopped))
• 2 Tbsp chipotle peppers in adobo sauce** ((minced))
• 4 oz unsalted tomato sauce
• 1/8 tsp garlic powder
• 1/8 tsp cumin
• 1/8 tsp unsalted chili powder
• Fresh ground black pepper ((to taste))

Step 3 – Assembly:

• 4 cups chopped lettuce ((such as romaine))
• 2 cups cooked rice
• 2 cups no salt added black beans ((rinsed – I use Eden Organic))
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• Green onion
• Cilantro
• Lime wedges
• 1 avocado (diced)

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Instructions

Step 1 – Slow cook the pork:

1. Put the pork in the crock pot with 1/8 teaspoon garlic powder, 3 ounces diet cola, brown sugar, and water. Cover and cook on low for about 4 hours, or until meat is tender.
2. Remove the pork from the crock pot and shred with two forks. Discard the liquid from the crock pot.
3. Put the shredded pork back into the empty crock pot and add the Sauce (see below).

Step 2 – Sauce:

1. In a medium bowl, stir together the 4 ounces diet cola, green chiles, chipotle peppers, tomato sauce garlic powder, cumin, chili powder, and black pepper.
2. Put the sauce in the crock pot with the pork. Cook for another hour on high. Note that if you use fresh green chiles instead of the fired roasted green chiles, you will need to cook the mixture for about two hours to make sure that the peppers are cooked through.

Step 3 – Assembly:

1. After rinsing the beans, warm them by placing them in a bowl and microwaving until heated through.
2. Assemble four separate bowls, each with 1 cup lettuce, ½ cup cooked rice, ½ cup warmed black beans, and about 4 ounces of the pork. Top with 2 tablespoons sour cream, ¼ of the avocado, tomato, cilantro, cilantro, and fresh squeezed lime. (This goes great with unsalted corn chips!)

Notes

* Nutritional information is based on diet Coke, which is just over 25 mg per 8 ounces.  You can use regular cola if you prefer.

 ** Canned chipotle peppers in adobo sauce vary widely in their sodium content.  The brand I used, Embasa, contains 80mg per tablespoon.

NUTRITIONAL INFORMATION Yield: 4 servings
Sodium:  156.0  mg,  Calories:  514.4,  Total Fat:  14.5  g,  Saturated Fat:  5.5  g,  Cholesterol:  102.7  mg,  Carbohydrates:  31.7  g,  Fiber:  4.1  g,  Sugar:  3.3  g,  Protein:  41.8  g.

Adapted from SkinnyTaste’s Slow Cooked Sweet Barbacoa Pork.