Recipe 29: Pulled Pork

While the last few recipes were simple and not all that impressive, I was super pleased with this one and it was also really simple.  I am not sure exactly why I decided to make pulled pork, I think I was just looking at recipes and found it. One thing that appealed to me was that it used a slow cooker.  I have managed to indefinitely borrow one of those from Eric and Allison.  So I figured that I might as well actually use it.

Regardless, I have made this 4 times total and everyone that I have shared it with has really liked it, so I think that is a good sign!

Here is the final result.  I had it with sandwich form with coleslaw in the top:

And here is the recipe that I used (link):

Ingredients

•     1 (2 pound) pork tenderloin
•     1 (12 fluid ounce) can or bottle root beer
•     1 (18 ounce) bottle your favorite barbecue sauce
•     8 hamburger buns, split and lightly toasted

Directions

1. Place the pork tenderloin in a slow cooker; pour the root beer over the meat. Cover and cook on low until well cooked and the pork shreds easily, 6 to 7 hours. Note: the actual length of time may vary according to individual slow cooker. Drain well. Stir in barbecue sauce. Serve over hamburger buns.

Changes

I made a lot of changes to this recipe, based on suggestions from other users.  The first and by far the most important change was to use pork shoulder instead of pork tenderloin.  So I bought a 5 pound pork shoulder instead of the tenderloin.

Because of the increase in size, I also increased how much soda and BBQ sauce that I used.  I used to bottles of root beer and two bottles of BBQ sauce, instead of the one recommended.  The type of root beer doesn't really matter, I would recommend Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce, since it is really good, but if you have another favorite, I am sure that would be great too.

The final change, which I think made a big difference is that after I am done shredding the pork  added it back to the slow cooker with the BBQ sauce and cooked it for another hour.

The Process

So at first I was unsure about cooking the pork in the root beer.  I wondered if it would make it taste weird, or like root beer.  So I did some research and basically the root beer simply is used to soften up the meat.

I added the pork shoulder to the slow cooker and then put the root beer in.  The root beer didn't quite cover up the pork, but I figured that was OK.

This is what it looked like when I was ready to take it out of the slow cooker.

This might have been one of sprinkles favorite dishes that I have made.  She snarfed down as much pork as I would give her.

To separate the pork I put it on a cookie sheet and then used two forks to pull it apart.  I made sure to separate the fat from the good meat.  You can sort of see it off in the corner of the sheet in the picture below.

I then put the pork back in the slow cooker and added the BBQ sauce.  It then cooked for another hour.

While that was cooking I made some coleslaw and used that to make the sandwiches.

I thought that this recipe turned out amazing.  The pork is really good, and this has been confirmed by the people that I have shared this with.  In later iterations I used Kaiser Rolls instead of hamburger buns.  I though that the Kaiser Rolls were much better and would for sure recommend those.