Like many of you (if not every single one of you), I’m always looking for meal ideas that will please everyone in the family. I’m also always looking for ways to expand my children’s culinary horizons. Recently, I found a great source of help with that effort. The National Pork Board has created a beautiful and useful website and associated program called the Pork Bucket List. The idea is to encourage all pork lovers out there to tell the world the items they’d cross off their #PorkBucketList to inspire people to buy and eat pork. Examples include giving someone a bacon rose, eating pig ears from a street vendor in Vietnam, or, like me, learning how to prepare pork belly from a chef.

Get this – if you share your bucket list item on social media, using a specific set of tags and hashtags (below), a few lucky pork-lovers will be selected throughout the year to help them cross an item off their list!

To Enter: Visit PorkBucketList.com and share your own idea online via Twitter, Facebook,  Pinterest  or Instagram, including the following information in your post, otherwise your submission won’t be counted: @allaboutpork #PorkBucketList and #promo. The program ends September 30, 2014.

So give the website a look-over for inspiration. Notice the really clever and delicious-sounding recipes, broken down by ethnicity. Since I love to eat, and try to cook cuisines from around the world, I really love that part. I’ll be looking to it again and again. Meanwhile, here’s a recipe I’m going to make soon.

ITALIAN STUFFED MEATBALL SANDWICH

Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 8 hours
Servings: 4 to 5 (about 12 to 15 meatballs)

For roasts, chops and tenderloins, cook to 145°F followed by a three-minute rest.
Read Details

Ingredients:

1 pound ground pork, lean
2 eggs, whisked
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 cup bread crumbs
1 cup fresh mozzarella balls, about 12 to 15 of small size
1 28-ounce jar tomato sauce
Kosher salt and freshly cracked black pepper
Submarine-style buns

Cooking Directions:

In a large bowl combine the whisked eggs, garlic powder and red pepper flakes. Add the ground pork and breadcrumbs and mix together until evenly combined.
Form the ground pork mixture into small meatballs, each the size of a golf ball.
Insert a mozzarella ball in the center of each meatball, taking care to re-form the meatball around the cheese once it’s been added. (The cheese should not be visible.)
Place the tomato sauce in the bottom of a slow cooker and add the meatballs on top.
Turn the slow cooker on and cook over high heat for 6 hours or low heat for 8 hours. Carefully rotate the meatballs after half the cooking time to make sure they cook evenly.

To serve, place three meatballs plus sauce in a submarine bun.

Serving Suggestions:

Try substituting regular breadcrumbs with equal amounts of panko bread crumbs, or any kind of pasta or red sauce available. Serve with sweet potato fries.

 

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