Weekend Plans: Easy Peasy Coca Cola BBQ Beef and My Coke Rewards Coke with Meals Program

This spring, Coca-Cola wants to help gather your family around the dinner table with Coke with Meals through My Coke Rewards. Take a cue from the warmer weather and let MCR.com spice-up your mealtimes with featured recipes and how-to videos from Chefs G. Garvin and Ingrid Hoffmann or submit your own recipes to inspire others!

With your family’s busy schedule, mealtime is the perfect opportunity to bring everyone together and share the day’s best moments over a Coke! Test out new recipes on MyCokeRewards.com/meals, where you can create a shareable cookbook of your family’s all-time favorites. You can also read and share tips on how to get kids, pre-teens and teens involved in the kitchen (because isn’t it more fun when you have helpers?!)

MyCokeRewards asked us to check out Chef Garvin's and Chef Hoffmann's recipes and see which one we liked and cook it, or tweak it and share our version.

Well if you've read this blog log enough, you know which option we picked! Yup, tweaking it is!

We selected Chef Gavin's Pork Loin with Coke Cola BBQ Sauce! 

Because a)not everyone has access to a BBQ, or b)has the time to cook on a grill, we wanted to share a way to make BBQ pork OR beef in your crockpot. Yup, even if you don't have a grill, you can make BBQ that will rival any made on the grill!

Now the pork roast were sold out, so we opted to show the recipe with 2 beef roasts, to show how flexible it is. But be assured, you can do a large pork roast THE SAME WAY. Your cook time may be less, but that is the ONLY difference!

Ready to start?

This is such an EASY recipe, you won't believe it!

Easy Peasy Coca Cola BBQ Beef

1. Place your roast(s) in your crockpot. Because we used 2 smaller ones, we could fit both in our bigger crockpot. We like to do this so we get 2 meals out of the roasts, with only 1 cooking!

2. Add a liter of Coca Cola. NOTHING else! You should cover up most of the meat.

As you can see, I had about a third of a glass left. If we fill up our crockpot more than 1/2 inch below surface, it always bubbles over. But you might be able to fill yours with the whole liter.

3. Put crockpot on high for 5-6 hours, depending on thickness of your meat. I started ours at 9am and pulled out about 3:15 pm. It literally was falling apart, so I had to use a spoon to pull it out! As you can see, I ended up with 'chunks" of meat! If you are doing pork roast(s), check at 5 hours.

This is what our meat looked like:

If you'll notice, it has a nice caramel color to it. Coca Cola gives it a great tenderness and color! FYI, the meat is in a LONG pyrex dish, so there's more than what it seems (when I cropped the pix, it made it look like the smaller dish).

4. Now the FUN part (and yes, I am saying that SARCASTICALLY)- shredding the meat.

We generally only allow meat to cool for about 15-20 minutes. You want it to fall apart, and that is best done while still warm/hot.  I wanted to show the forks we use, as a recommendation. You can use regular forks like on the left, if that is all you have. BUT, if you have a serving fork, with the POINTED (aka sharp) tines, you will get a MUCH better shred. We only have the one, so we use one of each.

After what seemed like HOURS, and a wonderful hand cramp later, I had half of the meat done:

WHEW! That's ALOT of meat- the bowl on the right is a serving bowl, not a salad bowl!

5. Now add your shredded meat to a large pot (we use dutch oven size) and then make your BBQ sauce (or you can make while the meat is cooking and keep on stove). Chef Gavin's recipe called for jalapeno, chicken stock,molasses and orange juice, which we don't use in our version. Thanks to a weird allergy reaction thing I have to molasses, I try to stay clear of products with it in it, or reduce the amount in recipes.

Our variation is this:

Mom's Coca-Cola Barbeque Sauce

Ingredients: 

2 tbsp canola oil

3 tbsp finely diced holy trinity (red and green bell pepper and white onion)

2 tbsp diced garlic

3 cups ketchup

1/2 cup Worcestershire Sauce

1 1/2 cup Coca-Cola (you can use 1- 1/4 cps for thicker, less sweet sauce)

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 tbsp liquid smoke

1 tsp chili powder

Directions:

1. In large sauce pan add the oil, heat the oil just a little and add the garlic, and trinity. Sauté for 2 minutes.

2. Add the remaining ingredients. Mix well and bring to a low simmer until sauce is combined. Check the flavor and adjust the sweetness if you like (add more brown sugar).

6. Now add your BBQ sauce to your meat. Stir well, coating ALL the meat. Then leave it alone for about 15 minutes. Why? Because it allows the BBQ sauce to go into the meat, not just coat it, sorta like a BBQ marinade. Then heat in the pot of medium high, til hot.

And you are DONE! Now take care of your side dish, and you've got dinner with not much effort. We generally serve with hamburger buns or kaiser type rolls. But you can also slather on french bread for po-boys. We generally have either potato or macaroni salad, coleslaw or chips with our. Just depends on the mood of the day, and available cooking time.

Will your family be happy with your super tender BBQ beef? What do you think?

And no, there was no prompting on the thumbs up- she took one bite, turned around and gave me the thumbs up! AND yes, she ate almost ALL of that large sandwich! She adores BBQ!

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Now back to the rest of the shredded beef that didn't get used for BBQ (no, I wasn't gonna leave you wondering):

The next day, we put it in the same pot we used to cook the BBQ in. Added some water and taco seasoning (how much depends on your preference). Simple easy shredded beef for tacos and burritos! 

All we had to do was chop veggies, heat some beans, make some rice, and fry up the shells. Not having to cook the beef means a huge time saver!

AND we like getting 2 meals our family LOVES from 1 no hands crockpot cooking!

So now that you see HOW easy it is to cook with coca cola, head on over to the website and check out the other great recipes. I;m sure there will be a couple to tempt you and your family!

Disclosure / Disclaimer:  Compensation was provided by Coca-Cola, but Coca-Cola is not a sponsor, administrator, or involved in any other way with this pin/post. All opinions expressed are my own and not those of Coca-Cola. No other compensation, monetary or in kind, has been received or implied for this post. Nor was I told how to post about the product or website.