Pulled Pork for the Crockpot

While reading the Detroit Free Press newspaper the other day, I found an interesting recipe for Pulled Pork in a crockpot. Sure there are zillions of pulled pork recipes for a crockpot, but what I found in this one was the marinating overnight. From past experience, I've found the "Freep" to offer many good recipes and knew this one would have similar results.

Pulled Pork, Adapted from the Detroit Free Press

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1/4 cup red wine vinegar

1/2 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar

1/2 cup soy sauce

2 cups ketchup

1 teaspoon garlick powder or garlic salt

1 large onion, coarsley chopped

2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

5 pound boneless pork shoulder roast, fat trimmed

Barbecue sauce for serving

Line your crockpot with a "Slow Cooker Plastic Liner". Mix the first 8 ingredients and pour into your lined crockpot. Set the roast inside and marinate in your refrigerator overnight. Rotate the roast/marinate a couple of times.

In the morning, remove the roast from the refrigerator and turn the crockpot on low for 10 hours. You want the pork roast to be fork-tender.

Remove the roast from the crockpot and let rest. Skim fat from the sauce.

Shred the meat using two forks and put aside.

Recipe posted in Detroit Free Press with source listed as http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/ and "Slow Cooker: The Best Cookbook Ever: by Diane Phillips. Tested by the Contra Costa Times.

My Changes:

When I got to the grocery store, they only had bone-in pork roasts. I chose one. However, the sizes were um...enormous! I heaved an 8 pound pork roast into the cart. Would it fit in my crockpot? My crockpot looks like this and holds about 5 quarts.

I made the marinade ingredients at about 1 1/2 times the amounts. Boy, it sure did look "ketchupy". When I sampled it, I wasn't too pleased but you never know how pork can change a dish till you try. I lined my crockpot, filled it with the marinade and then the roast and stuck it into the garage. Gotta love Michigan...in the winter your garage becomes a mega sized fridge!

The next morning, I brought it in and turned on the crock pot at about 7:30am. Pulled the pork roast out at about 5pm. It was perfect. The meat came apart so easily and the bone just fell out. Loved it! Maybe I snuck a sample piece at that point. Just maybe. Let's just say...hypothetically...I did taste a piece. It would have been wonderful.

Not sure what a "Slow Cooker Plastic Liner" is? Check out this link to Reynolds.

How did I finish the dish? Well I defatted the sauce by spooning off what I could remove. There was a quite a bit of sauce. I kept the sauce seperate from the meat for ease of reheating/serving, etc.

One dish became a pulled pork sandwich. My dish was strictly just the pork. (I lived in North Carolina for a few years. Just a pile of pulled pork, a requirement to learn to eat just the meat.)

I shredded the meat and reserved the leftovers. I only heated what I would serve. I used some of the sauce as the moisture during the reheat and had the mess cleaned up before I even prepared the plates. Easy peasy! Add more sauce if you like it or serve with BBQ sauce as the recipe suggests.

I also ate leftovers last night which heated up perfectly and I did toss some of the pork into my mexican salad for a work lunch today. FANTASTIC. Only wish I could find pork roasts about 200 pounds, see that would really be nice. Rival..get your crockpot design a little larger!