Slow Cooker North Carolina Pulled Pork
It was the last day of August in San Diego. The weather was set to remind us that not so long ago where my house stood, it was a desert fit for lizards, snakes and coyotes. Hiding inside my air-conditioned haven, I started to plan my Labor Day feast. Normally, this would involve resetting my grill for rotisserie cooking and an hours long pilgrimage of love out of my comfortable house into the blistering back yard to check and adjust the cooking as needed to make perfect pulled pork sandwiches several sweat soaked hours later. Truth be told not only is great pulled pork Bar-B-Q one of my all time favorite ways to get full but it is the only way my mom would let me get away with saying, “butt! – teehee” for hours when she cooked one. There! Now you know. Hence my fondness for Minions!
Anyway, I decided I would risk an alternative cooking method for this year’s Labor Day Bar-B-Q pulled pork extravaganza.
Ingredients
Pork Butt
3 to 4 pounds (1.4 to 1.8 kg) pork roast, Boston butt or pork shoulder
Grandpa’s Butt Rub Stuff
1 Tbs Mild Paprika
2 Tbs Brown Sugar
1.5 tsp of Hot Paprika
.5 tsp salt
.5 tsp coarse ground fresh pepper
.5 tsp celery salt
.5 tsp garlic salt
.5 tsp powdered garlic
.5 tsp onion powder
.5 tsp Tajin Classic Seasoning
.5 tsp Trader Joe’s Chili and Lime Seasoning
.5 tsp dry mustard
.5 tsp Adobo Seasoning.
Crock Pot Stuff
1 cup (240 mL) apple cider vinegar
1 cup beer
1 large sweet onion sliced
1 to 1 1/2 cups (240 to 360 mL) of
your favorite store bought barbecue sauce ( I like Sweet Rays)
Directions
- Rub Your Butt and Wrap it Up
- Take Glad Wrap and lay it out on the clean dry cookie sheet with half a sheet length excess on either side (approximately 3 feet of wrap.
- Wash and dry your pork butt and place on cookie sheet
- In a medium mixing bowl, whisk all the Grandpa’s Butt Rub ingredients together, taking care to eliminate all lumps until it is a course powdery mix
- Sprinkle Grandpa’s Butt Rub on all four sides of your butt and rub it into the meat. Keep turning the roast to get all of the loose rub off and then rubbed back into the meat, so the butt roast is uniformly covered in rub mix.
- Center your rubbed butt roast in the middle of the sheet long ways and wrap your butt up. Repeat for each short and long side 2 times making sure that the wrap is covering the entire roast completely. Put on a plate.
- Put your plated wrapped and rubbed butt in the refrigerator for at least 24 hours
- Grill Your Butt
- Heat Gas Grill till the grate is as hot as it gets.
- When the grill’s grate is nice and hot, place your butt (the pork one .. we don’t want any confusion injuries!) on it and sear all sides. This will take about 5 to 6 minutes. You want to make deep grill marks, reduce the fat but do not let the fat catch fire
- Slow Cook Your Butt
- Set slow cooker for high heat. Place your grill marked butt into slow cooker on top of the separated onion slice rings.
- Pour vinegar and beer over roast and turn the butt over in the crock pot to make sure the vinegar and beer reaches all sides of your butt.
- Cook on high for 1 hour, reduce temperature and cook on low for 6 to 8 hours, or until your butt is tender enough to pull apart with your fingers.
- Make some Bar-B-Q
- Once cooked, remove your butt from the pot and discard liquid. I leave the onions in the pot.
- Leave slow cooker on low. Using forks, tear and shred butt into small pieces and return the pulled pork to the slow cooker.
- Pour in barbecue sauce. There should be enough barbecue sauce to coat the meat but not so much as to make it runny.
- Turn the Crock Pot to warm and set some big sesame hamburger buns on a plate next to the fresh cole slaw.
And watch your Butt (teehee) disappear.