Slow Cooker Pulled Pork

Slow Cooker Pulled Pork makes fantastic sandwiches — and the leftovers are great in soooo many other recipes.

One of these days I’ll update this OLD recipe with better photos — but looks aside, it’s still darn tasty. 🙂

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Welcome to the October 11, 2015 edition of Sunday Scratchups, your weekly recipe from scratch around grocery sales and affordable ingredients. Pork is always seasonally on sale in the fall, and as the weather starts to turn colder it’s a great time to enjoy Slow Cooker Pulled Pork (and other slow cooked comfort food recipes!).

Note in 2022 — boy, remember the days when the sales were $.99/lb instead of… $1.99/lb? 🙂

I hope that those of you in the vicinity of a Jewel-Osco store picked up a super-cheap pork roast on their one-day sale earlier this week: This one cost me only $3.69 after sale price + coupon. I’m not super thrilled that they’re solution-added (and boy was there a lot of liquid at the bottom of the Crock Pot!), but at $.64 a pound and several meals from one roast…

Now if you want to get very easy-peasy when making pulled pork for sandwiches, simply throw your pork in the slow cooker with a bottle of BBQ sauce and maybe a couple of sliced onions. Here I decided instead to season up this roast to be more versatile, though. This way everyone can just add their own BBQ sauce to taste when making sandwiches, and we can also use the non-BBQed meat in things like tacos or burrito bowls.

Slow Cooker Pulled Pork

Ingredients

2 medium yellow onions, quartered
6-8 lb pork butt / shoulder roast
1 Tbsp Kosher salt
Black pepper, to taste
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup chili powder
3 Tbsp minced garlic
2 Tbsp paprika
2 Tbsp brown sugar
1 Tbsp oregano
1 tsp cayenne
1 bay leaf

Directions

Cut up the onions and place them in the bottom of the slow cooker.

Season the pork roast with Kosher salt and pepper. Place the pork on top of onions, fatty side down.

In a separate bowl, mix the olive oil, paprika, chili powder, cayenne, oregano, brown sugar, and garlic until they make a wet paste, then slather that on top of the roast. Add the bay leaf and cook on low for 8-9 hours.

Remove bay leaf, bone, and large pieces of fat, and move the meat and onions to a separate pan to shred. Shred the meat, and serve as desired.

This makes great BBQ pork sandwiches

A cheap pack of hamburger buns from ALDI + a little BBQ sauce later, and we had ourselves some truly delicious pulled pork sandwiches! (Which, by the way, go great with apple chips and clementines.)

Slow Cooker Pulled Pork is a great comfort food Crock Pot recipe for fall, and makes a t-o-n of leftovers for use in other recipes or in sandwiches, burrito bowls, hash, and more.

Slow Cooker Pulled Pork, printable recipe

Leftover pulled pork is the best

Here are a few recipe ideas for your leftover pulled pork, too!

• Easy leftover pulled pork chili
• Pork & spinach baked taquitos
• Southwest pulled pork & potato bowls
• Salsa pulled pork soup
• Comforting carnitas stew

Pulled pork also works great in quesadillas, or as a baked potato topping. Season up some leftover pulled pork as a burrito filling, heat it up with some BBQ sauce for sandwiches, throw it into baked acorn squash, use it to top nachos, and so much more.

Recipes in the real world

Be sure not to miss the free ALDI meal plans, which show you how to use these easy family recipes to meal plan affordably and realistically for your family. Or, find more recipe ideas with the Recipe Search!