Slow Cooker Barbeque Pulled Pork

Since Mark reminded me that I hadn’t posted this yet.

This takes a while to cook so plan in advance.

Ingredients

  • Pork Shoulder, around 1.8Kg
  • Apple Juice – the cheap, supermarket own-brand stuff is good. Quantity depends on your slow cooker/pork size (see below)
  • 3 Onions
  • 400g Barbeque Sauce
  • Salt & Pepper

To Serve

  • Coleslaw
  • Crusty rolls

Method

It’s easiest to cook this overnight since there’s 15 hours of cooking time in total so I’ve split the method over two days.

Day 1

  1. Slice two of the onions. Use one of them to line the bottom of your slow cooker.
  2. Discard any string or binding from the pork and rub with salt and pepper.
  3. Place into the slow cooker on top of the onion.
  4. Pour over apple juice to fill about 3/4 of the way up.
  5. Arrange the other sliced onion over the top of the pork.
  6. Cook on low for about 12 hours or overnight.

Day 2

  1. Remove the pork (carefully) from the slow cooker and let rest on a plate until it’s cooled a little (just so you don’t burn yourself).
  2. Empty out the slow cooker.
  3. Use a couple of forks to pull the pork apart to how you want it. Discard any fat and bones.
  4. Add the pulled pork back to the slow cooker. Add the barbeque sauce and mix well.
  5. Chop up the remaining onion and mix through the pork.
  6. Heat on high for 2-3 hours or until the onions are soft.

Serving

Butter a crusty roll, stick a generous dollop of pork on it and top off with coleslaw. You can eat it hot or cold.

Notes

After cooking with the sauce, don’t let the pork sit in there for too long. Even leaving it in there on the warm setting for a few hours can stew it and it’ll end up like old leather.

You can really use any liquid to cook with. I just like the apple juice. Ones I’ve had suggested but haven’t tried yet are root beer, actual beer and Coca-Cola.

Rather than use barbeque sauce, you can use apple cider vinegar to make something like you get in Hard Rock Cafe. I’ve found the apple cider vinegar a little difficult to get though.

The pork should keep for a couple of days in the fridge.

Kevin Wilson

.NET developer, JavaScript enthusiast, Android user, Pebble wearer, sometime musician and occasional cook.

3 thoughts on “Slow Cooker Barbeque Pulled Pork

  1. What do you do with the liquid and onions the pork cooked in overnight? Do you mix some or all of it back into the pulled pork for Stage 2?

    You can get cheap cider vinegar in all the supermarkets. Tesco – and maybe the others – stock the more upmarket Aspall’s stuff
    http://www.aspall.co.uk/vinegar

    1. Thanks for the tip. I’ve not noticed that in any of the local supermarkets but I’ll keep an eye out.

      I mostly just throw out the left-over liquid and onions after the pork has cooked; it’s a bit oily from the fat that’s melted. If you only have thick barbecue sauce, then you could use it to thin it down to taste though.

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