Gosh, this salad.  Where do I begin?  Ultra tender achiote pulled pork and sweet and tangy pickled red onions on a bed of fresh spinach – a wow worthy meal, for sure!

I started by making a double batch of homemade achiote paste {not by choice}.  A pre-made paste was nowhere to be found, so I Googled my way through the Whole Foods aisles until I found annatto seeds {the red nuggets in the photo above} and a recipe that made sense.

I then purchased the rub ingredients from this recipe, but didn’t care much for the cooking instructions {or the review comments}, so this big hunk of pork and I went rogue in the kitchen.

After coating the 4 pound bone-in pork shoulder with the rub, I wrapped it tightly with plastic wrap and let it hang in the fridge for about 16 hours.  I placed the pork in a slow cooker, poured 32 ounces of veggie broth around the sides {being careful not to wash the rub off the meat}, and placed a few quartered yellow onions around the pork.  I let it cook on low heat for about 8 hours {until the meat pulled away easily from the bone} and then used two forks to to shred the meat.

After the meat was prepared, assembling the salad was super easy: baby spinach, pickled red onions, pulled pork. And the best part about this salad?  The pork provided fat and the pickled onions provided acid, so the addition of salad dressing was unnecessary.