Crockpot Pulled Pork

I love recipes that I can spend little time on but it turn out to be a budget friendly recipe that tastes like I spent forever putting it together. My crockpot pulled pork is one of these recipes. If you love barbecue places, then you will love this recipe.

The reason I love this recipe the most is that I can pick up all of the ingredients in bulk. What a money saver!

Ingredients:

4-6 lb Pork Shoulder Roast
1 onion chopped
1 bottle of beer or apple juice
1 bottle barbecue sauce
Seasonings

First, roughly chop up an onion and drop into the bottom of your crockpot. At this point I also like to add some garlic salt. It adds a little flavor. Other seasonings could be added of course.

Next, add in your pork shoulder roast. A pork butt roast also works really well. Here is where I save the most. I get a 12 lb. pork shoulder roast and cut it in half. I use one and freeze the rest. Instead of buying a 6 lb. one at my local grocery store for $12, I got a 12 lb. roast for $16 in bulk. It's easy to cut it in half and freeze the rest.

Make sure to place the roast fat side up, so that the meat stays moist. I also add some garlic salt over the top as well. Then, pour in your beer or apple juice. The first time I cooked this, I decided to try beer even though we don't really like beer at all. Since most barbecue places cook their meat in some sort of beer, I thought it would make it the closest to what you can get in a great barbecue place. We used Blue Moon since it seems like a lot of people like that beer. We tasted it and thought it wasn't too bad. Turns out it makes great pulled pork.

Here is where you turn your crockpot on low and leave it alone. Just leave it. Come back in 8-10 hours, depending on the size of your roast. When it's done it will fall apart when you test it with a fork. Let your crockpot do the work for you!

So, since my was pretty big, I cooked it for a little over 10 hours, more like 11, since it was also partially frozen when I put it in. I'm impatient and it was taking forever to thaw. It worked out fine just cooking it a little longer. What you see in the picture above is a roast that literally fell apart when I took it out of the crockpot.

So, using two forks, shred the pork to your liking. This is the most time intensive part, it took about 15 minutes to separate the meat from the fat. I don't like fat mixed in, but maybe you do. I clean out my crockpot of the leftover juices, to make sure the result isn't watery. Place the shredded meat back in the crockpot.

Pour your favorite barbecue sauce over the top. I used a 16oz bottle of Sweet Baby Ray's. Then cook the pork for another 2-3 hours, depending on your preference.

I cooked it for another 3 hours. I let it cook with the sauce on top for about 2 hours and then stir it up before letting it cook the last hour. The result is a weeks worth of lunches and dinners. It's great on a bun or just by itself. Best part is the whole batch cost about $10. We get about 10 meals out of it, which means it's $1 a meal. It's definitely a recipe easy on your budget.