This is probably the easiest thing in the world to make and it will feed you for a week (or longer if you freeze some of it). All you need is a slow cooker aka crock pot and a couple bottles of beer. You can get all fancy with it if you want and create some sort of dry rub to rub all over the pork shoulder, which would then require spices, but if you don’t have them it’s not a big deal. Actually the only reason I have so many damn spices in my house is that I got the idea to make homemade BBQ sauce one day (before making pulled pork) and I spent like $70 on spices… It was a waste. Don’t get me wrong, the BBQ sauce was good, but it wasn’t $70 a bottle good, especially when I could have gone to the spice store down the street and gotten much smaller amounts of each spice… but we’ll save that for another post.
Ok, so you have a slow cooker/crock pot, a couple bottles of cheap beer (don’t waste the good stuff, you won’t taste it anyways), now you need to get yourself a pork shoulder from the store. You can usually find these at your lock grocery store, but if you’ve got a butcher shop or whatever nearby, they will definitely have it. We have a circular, medium sized, crock pot and the last shoulder we jammed in there was 4.5 lbs. You just want to make sure that the pork shoulder fits inside the crock pot with the lid closed. Don’t worry if it’s not all submerged in the beer, it most likely won’t be. Once it starts cooking, the meat will just fall off the bone and settle itself into the beer.
We usually put everything into the crock pot in the morning, turn it on Low heat and it’s done by the time we get home from work (about 8-9 hours). Once you get home, pull it out of the crock pot and put it on a baking tray, then use two forks and pull it apart; it should be pretty easy. Once it’s pulled, throw it back in the slow cooker and let it marinate in the juices a for a few minutes and then it’s ready to serve.
I usually don’t put the BBQ sauce in the crock pot and instead put the pork on a bun and then add BBQ sauce afterwards, but it’s up to you. Also if you’re making mexican pulled pork tacos, before you start cooking it, throw a jar of salsa verde into the slow cooker with the beer and it’ll give it a nice little mexican flavor.
A slow cooker is the greatest tool a guy can have when it comes to cooking; even I can make delicious pulled pork in it.
If you’re looking for another twist on it, try this recipe for Root Beer BBQ Pulled Pork.
[picture courtesy of recipegirl.com]
I just discovered this post because Foodie Crush tweeted it. I am so inspired and can hardly wait to try so many of your recipes!