Slow Cooker: Pulled Pork

I had seen pictures of pulled pork popping up on my instagram feed for a couple of weeks and they looked so delicious that I was really keen to try it.  Meg and Eli aren’t great at trying ‘new’ foods but I was sure that even they couldn’t resist the loveliness that was pulled pork (seriously, I was eating it as I was serving it!)

The original recipe/inspiration comes from here and I’ve just made a couple of adjustments, mostly relating to the ingredients I had available in the house at the time.

Ingredients
Pork shoulder (or any other pork joint, this is just what I happened to buy)

Bottle of cider

First things first, you need to place your pork joint in the slow cooker with the bottle of cider (or alternative liquid) and cook it on low for around 8 hours.  I did this first thing in the morning to allow us to have it for dinner that evening but you could easily just reheat your pork if you didn’t have time and wanted to make it a day or two ahead.

Once the pork is cooked, remove it from the slow cooker and place it on a plate ready for ‘pulling’.  With the leftover cooking liquid, you want to keep around a cupful but can dispose of the rest.

The pork should be incredibly tender after spending 8 hours in the slow cooker and you should be able to easily and quickly shred it using a couple of forks.  You might need to cut some fat away depending on your joint.

Once the pork has been shredded, return it to your slow cooker and prepare the BBQ sauce.

For the BBQ Sauce

Your leftover cooking liquid

Onion
1 tbsp mustard powder
1 tbsp paprika
140g tomato ketchup
2 tbsp vinegar

2 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp worcestershire sauce
3 tbsp brown sugar

2 cloves of garlic

Sauté the onions and garlic for a few minutes, then throw in the rest of the ingredients and simmer for 15-20 minutes.  Pour over the pulled pork and allow to warm through in the slow cooker.

I served ours with jacket potatoes and broccoli and everyone agreed, it was delicious!  On top of this we had so much pork leftover that we used the remainder for pulled pork sandwiches the next day which were equally yummy.