Budget Slow Cooking - Pork cheeks In Cider and Apples.

Im always trying to find ways of keeping the food shopping bill down without compromising on quality fresh family meals, lets face it I do have to feel 3 extremely hungry boys and it can get expensive! Im an Aldi shopper, I find you cant beat the quality and the price but recently when The Sun newspaper had been printing amazing money off vouchers for Morrisons I couldn't turn them down. Last Thursday they had a £5 off voucher for £10 worth of fresh meat at Morrisons and to try and get the most for my money I looked at the more unusual cheeper cut of meat and in the end for only £6 I managed to get a pack of beef mince, 2 packs of diced lamb, a pack of stewing beef and kidney and these pork cheeks....AMAZING!

Some people may turn their nose up at pork cheeks but for £1.70 you cant argue you great a great amount of meat for your money. Pork cheeks seem to be a fashionable cut of meat right now I have seen them on many a cooking show and they are a great meat to use in slow cooking. I absolutely adore my slow cooker so after researching a few recipe ideas I decided to cook my pork cheeks in cider with apples onion and thyme so here is what you will need:

• One red onion.
• One leek.
• One cooking apple.
• Two carrots.
• 1tsp of dried thyme.
• A chicken stock cube 
• 1/2 a bottle of cider.
• Beef gravy granules.   

As always with slow cooker recipes you pretty much throw all the ingredients into the pot and its done, although I do like to cook my leek, onion and apple a little first until they start to caramelise just to add some extra flavour. Sprinkle the thyme and crumbled stock cube over the ingredients and add half a bottle of cider and top up with some boiling water just so everything is covered in liquid. I cooked this on a low setting for 7 hours and just before serving adding a few gravy granules to thicken up the reduced sauce.

This recipe is so so delicious.....the other half actually telling me it was one of the best dishes I have ever cooked! Such a great twist to your usual casserole, slow cooking the pork makes it just melt in your mouth and the cider and diced apples give the sauce a rich sweet flavour that compliments the pork perfectly.

I like to serve this with creamy mash potato, sage and onion stuffing and peas but would also taste lovely with a pile of roast potatoes! Overall this is an amazingly tasty yet extremely cheep meal I urge you to give pork cheeks a go!

Thank you for reading.

LouLou.