This incredible recipe originated from the awesome Home Sweet Eats food blog. I found this when I was looking for something easy and delicious for a big game party. The original recipe includes a pulled pork grilled cheese which is insanely good, but I most often just make the pork. Be sure to subscribe to her page as well!
This is a 12-hour cook that I recommend running overnight. It's incredible to wake up to smell of barbeque pork in the morning!
This starts with a 6 1/2 pound Pork Shoulder and ends up with shredded awesomeness. You don't even have to know how to cook to make this. Throw everything into the slow cooker, set the timer for 12 hours and you're done. It's about as easy as a recipe you'll ever make.
It's optional to sear the pork on all sides, though I recommend it as it does seem to add some additional flavor. But if you don't want to deal with the searing, just skip that step and throw everything into the slow cooker.
For this recipe, you'll want at least a 6-quart slow cooker. Anything smaller probably won't work.
Prep, Cook, Servings for the Lentil Casserole
Prep: 10 min. Cook: 20 min. rest.
Servings: 8
Ingredients
1 (6 - 7 pound) pork butt/shoulder
1 tablespoon onion powder (adjust to taste)
1 tablespoon smoked paprika (adjust to taste, I like to add more)
1 teaspoon garlic powder (adjust to taste, can also add a few garlic cloves into the slow cooker)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
12 ounces of beer
32 ounces of barbecue sauce + additional for drizzling. (also be sure to save the juice after you're done cooking)
Instructions (the full video transcript is below the Notes section)
If you are going to sear the pork follow these steps, otherwise place the pork into the slow cooker and jump down to the next section.
Heat up a heavy pan like a cast-iron pan over medium-high heat. Drizzle enough olive oil in the pan to wet the entire bottom.
When the pan and oil are good and hot, place the pork butt/shoulder into the pan. Let it sear, undisturbed for 2 - 4 minutes. You want it to start to get some golden brown on the outside, it's ok if some of it starts to burn.
Carefully turn the meat and sear all sides for 2 - 4 minutes each.
When all the sides are seared, turn off the heat and place the pork into the slow cooker.
Add the onion powder, smoked paprika and garlic powder to the top of the pork. If you're adding garlic cloves you can place them on top of the pork or along the sides.
Add Salt and Pepper to taste.
Cover the pork with the 32 ounces of barbeque sauce.
Set the slow cooker temperature to Low and set the timer for 12 hours.
When the cook is completed, carefully remove the pork into a large bowl or large cooking pan. The pork will most likely start falling apart when you try to lift it so be careful.
If desired, reserve the cooking juices into a bowl to use while serving. (the juices are AMAZING, save them!!)
Shred the pork with a pair of forks, tongs or whatever you have handy.
Eat!
Serving Notes
This is great for sandwiches, eating on its own, mixing with tomato sauce to make an incredible pasta sauce, you can make a lasagna with this, and it makes great omelets.
The pork freezes incredibly well. You can create portions using Silicon Baking Molds, freeze them and then use a vacuum sealer to pack in the freshness. The pork will easily hold in the freezer for 6 months vacuum sealed.
Video Transcript. Apologies in advance for any typos.
Walter 0:00 Folks welcome back to Where's Walter. In this episode is slow cooker pulled pork. Walter 0:14 The slow cooker is probably the easiest way to cook. I mean just throw everything in there, turn it on, you know 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 hours later you have a beautiful beautiful meal to eat. We use these a lot especially in the wintertime we'll make like big soups and even things like this with the pork and then I'll portion it often individual portions just leave it in the freezer so when I'm ready to pull it out. So today we are doing a beautiful pork shoulder. This is a 12-hour cook. So what we're going to do is go back in time to last night.
Now in this recipe, we're going to use a six-pound pork butt or shoulder. This particular one came from Costco I bought a 13 pounder and I cut it in half. I cooked up the other part earlier and this one's actually been sitting in the freezer for a couple of months so I defrosted it. We've got smoked paprika, we've got onion powder, we've got garlic powder, it calls for 32 ounces of barbecue sauce. I didn't have one jar that had it. So we're just going to mix up a couple of the barbecue sauces over here. We got salt, pepper, and we've got a 12 ounce can of beer. That's it.
Now, this first step is optional, we're going to go ahead and sear the outside of the meat. I find it gives a little bit more flavor. So if you can go ahead and do it, but you got to be careful because this is like six pounds of meat that you're trying to flip around in there. So just be careful if you're going to do this. Now if you don't want to seer the meat, that's okay, just take the pork shoulder and drop it straight into the crockpot and go on to the next step. Okay, I'm using a cast iron pan and I've got this thing really, really hot right now. I'm going to add some olive oil to the bottom. Just about that much. So I just want to make sure I get the bottom wet. And the oil is what's going to do the searing, making sure I've got this on medium heat. Alright, yeah, we got to be very careful. I'm just gonna pick this guy up with my hands. Drop it in. Walter 2:05 I'm just going to do this about two or three minutes a side. I've got this really, really heavy spatula here I've got a pair of tongs, this is not going to be the easiest thing when I go to turn it. We want to try to get all the sides. So the two big sides and then all the sides as well if we can. If we don't, not a big deal, you just want to try it. Smelling pretty good. I'm going to go ahead and see how we can do this. Get up under here a little bit now it's sticking to the pan a little, there you go. Work it. Work it. There we go. One Piece kind of broke off there. That's okay. Shove that back in the pan. Get it back down there. There we go. A piece kind of ripped off because of the, because of it sticking to the pan. The thing about working with cast iron, sometimes things stick to it. It's not a big deal. All of this is going to cook once it goes into the crockpot. At some time, you might have to just hold it up like this. If it wants to fall over, you get a pair of tongs and just hold it up. Walter 3:27 All right, roll it over. Just need to be in the crockpot. Now since I've got three barbecue sauces here, I'm actually going to mix them up before I put them in there. Got this mustard. Got a garlic barbecue sauce here. I don't know we just picked these up. This is a Publix Carolina mustard. I knew I had one mustard here so I just grabbed another mustard. Use whatever barbecue sauce you like. I just want to mix them up so that the flavors blend together before I put it in the pork. Literally pour this entire thing over. Walter 4:16 How pretty is that? Finally the beer. Walter 4:31 That's a nice little fizz to it, right? Give it a little salt, pepper, we're going to put the slow cooker into the low setting and then set it for 12 hours. And there you go that easy. And remember, you don't have to sear the meat if you don't want to deal with you know, putting it in the pan and all that, just drop it straight into here, add all the rest of the ingredients and turn it on. It's that simple. So it's about 10 o'clock at night. So I'll see you guys at about 10 o'clock tomorrow morning.
Um, gosh, smells so good. One of the cool things about cooking with a slow cooker overnight is when you wake up, you just like this house smells like barbecued pork right now. It smells amazing. So all we have left to do now is just to shred this up.
So you can see the meat already breaking apart when I took it out. Now you can use tongs to break it apart. I'm just gonna go ahead and use a couple of forks. And literally all you do is just start shredding. This is why it's called pulled pork. You just pull it apart. This may be the best version of this pulled pork I've ever made.
There you go super easy, super delicious pulled pork. If you like what we're doing, please subscribe and click that little bell icon so that you know when we put up some more deliciousness for you to see. And thanks for joining us. We'll see you in the next episode.
I wish there was a way I could just you know, oh my god. Oh my god, this is the best I've ever made. Look, I'm just gonna go dunk. You know, you can dunk your doughnuts in coffee. I'm gonna dunk my pork in juice. That really didn't sound good, did it?