Spicy Citrus Pork Roast (Crock Pot) - cooking recipe

Ingredients

4 slices bacon, chopped
3 lbs boneless pork shoulder, trimmed of excess fat
2 medium onions, thinly sliced
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 jalapeno pepper, finely chopped
1 1/2 tablespoons chili powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cracked black peppercorns (or coarsely ground pepper)
1/4 cup flour
1 tablespoon orange zest
1 1/2 cups orange juice
2 bananas, peeled and thinly sliced

Preparation

Cook bacon until crisp in a skillet over medium high heat. Remove bacon pieces from skillet and set aside, leaving fat in skillet.
In same pan, brown roast on all sides. Transfer to slow cooker.
Remove all but 1 TB of bacon fat from pan. Reduce heat to medium. Add onions and cook, stirring, until slightly wilted.
Add garlic, jalapeno, chili powder, salt, and pepper and cook, stirring, for 1 minute.
Sprinkle in flour and cook, stirring, one more minute.
Add orange zest, juice, and bananas, and cook, stirring to scrape up any bits stuck to the skillet. Mash bananas into sauce as you stir (but it's OK if some chunks/slices remain - these will disintegrate during the slow cooking).
Stir in bacon pieces. Pour contents of skillet over pork.
Cover and cook on low for 8 hours. Note that the original recipe indicated that this could be cooked on high for 4-5 hours, but I'm afraid that my slow cooker would burn this due to the high sugar content of the fruit. You can use your judgment based on your knowledge of your slow cooker - I needed to save some time so I started on high for 1 hour and switched to low for 4 1/2 hours and it turned out perfectly.