Someone asked me on my Facebook page to post more slow cooker recipes which was quite coincidental because yesterday, as I was reading that particular post, I was unpacking a giant pork roast that I intended to make into pulled pork. This is about the easiest meal a person could make and so versatile. This morning we ate the pulled pork with eggs and tonight I’ll make some Purple Cabbage Slaw to eat along with the pork and I’ll maybe even make a salad out of it for lunch tomorrow; if there is any left (which I doubt there will be….)
Beyond Easy Pulled Pork
4-5 lb pork butt roast
2 yellow onions, sliced
Dry Rub
3 tbsps chili powder
1 tsp coriander
2 tsps cumin
2 tsps onion powder
1 tablespoon dried parsley
¼ teaspoon chipotle powder
2 tsps sea salt
Mix all dry rub ingredients together. Rub the entire roast with the dry rub (you should use it all.) Place a layer of onions on the bottom of your slow cooker. Place the roast on top. Put the rest of the sliced onions on top of the slow cooker. NO LIQUID NECESSARY! Cook the roast on high for 5-6 hours and then turn down to low for another 3-4 hours or until the roast is literally falling apart and easy to shred.
Enjoy!
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Yay! I’ve been searching for a “working/full time student single mom” pulled pork recipe… aka something which wouldn’t require seventeen steps and my hovering in the kitchen for hours! Thank you for posting! =)
You are very welcome and I hope you enjoy the recipe!
Sarah, can I use a different cut of pork for this recipe? I have a pork roast in the fridge, but it’s not butt.
Pork loin works just fine too. I tried this recipe with that and it’s just as fantastic. Make sure one side of the loin has a nice layer of fat on one side. Place the fat-side up so as it slow cooks the fat can “melt” down over the meat as it cooks.
Yes, the roast should work just fine!
This recipe for Pulled Pork is wonderful, but I used a pressure cooker and it only took 55 minutes for a 3 pound roast, and a very little liquid. Delicious…..
PS. I forgot to add that I used 2 Tablespoons of Liquid Smoke…
I do “pulled” meat of all kinds in my toaster oven–I put some water in the bottom of the little broiler pan, then add my doctored-up meat, then cover it all with foil, and cook for 3 hours. No hovering, no crock-pot, and no oven burning away.
Yes, you can “pull” just about any kind of meat–two days ago, we ate pulled brisket, and tonight it’s pulled chicken breasts (in the toaster oven again).
For those of you interested in crocking, there’s an entire website devoted to Paleo crock-pot cooking: http://paleopot.com/
I do a pork roast in the crock pot about every 2-3 weeks, my kids love it and it always lasts for at least 3 meals (couple of dinners and a lunch usually). We also do approximately the same recipe you listed above, but with chicken breasts (that might be from your cookbook) and my 2yo twins love it.
Yup, it’s also delicious with chicken for sure!!
Looks great! Is it a pastured pig? I think I just might make this tonight! Think it matters if the roast is frozen and smaller?
It won’t matter if the roast is smaller but it will for sure make a difference with cooking time if you start with a frozen roast, just make sure you cook it long enough that it falls apart easily.
Oh and no, unfortunately this time it was not from a pastured pig.
Mmmmmmmmmmm porky goodness… Perfect for meal for busy students on a budget, thank you. x
Would this recipe work with a pork loin?
Pork loin works just fine too. I tried this recipe with that and it’s just as fantastic. Make sure one side of the loin has a nice layer of fat on one side. Place the fat-side up so as it slow cooks the fat can “melt” down over the meat as it cooks.
Man, these pork and bacon recipes really make me wish my hubby wasn’t jewish
Stephanie-
I did mine with a beef round roast and it turned out great
I logged on today to look for a recipe for pulled pork, and your website greeted me with an amazing picture of exactly what I wanted. Thanks for providing another awesome recipe, and for reading my mind and stomach.
You are very welcome and I hope you enjoy!
Hi! I just made my pork last night in the slow cooker. Have you ever tried it with a chile verde sauce on it? I just make a chile verde salsa – but i water it down a bit with a little chicken stock, then I pour it over the pork butt and slow cook it same way. Delicious! Super impressed my friends who thought it wasn’t going to be as good as it was.
THanks for this rub recipe…I’m going to share it and impress more people and hopefully get them to buy your recipe book! I love it…
Yes I sure have! I have my own chili verde recipe found here on the blog and I also have just dumped the salsa verde from Trader Joes onto pork loin and let it cook in the crock pot and it’s delicious.
“Put the rest of the sliced onions on top of the slow cooker”
Now why would I put the rest of the onions on top of the slow cooker?
LOL! Thanks for catching that. That’s hilarious…
Hey Sarah! Love this, thanks. We make pork butt a lot in this household and I wanted to tell you that we use something i know you love on ours! After we shred it, sometimes we throw in a jar of Trader Joe’s Salsa Verde! It’s SO GOOD! It is perfect for on lettuce tacos, or just served with avocado and a side of shredded cabbage like you sometimes do with dinners.
It reminds me of the pulled pork at Qdoba. I am guessing you’ve probably already tried it with the Salsa Verde, but I had to share in case you haven’t! Take care!
-Geneva
We do the same thing with the TJ’s salsa verde! So good!
How many servings does that make? I’m a single gal so I don’t have any mouths to feed besides my own. Can I freeze the leftovers?
Also – thanks for your website Sarah! I just started Paleo this past Thursday and listened to a few of your podcasts for advice. I liked the birth control discussion =)
This serves a very hungry family of 5 and yes, you can freeze leftovers!
You can make a great (lettuce) taco filling using leftover pulled pork like this. Heat a cast iron pan on medium heat with a little oil wiped over the surface, and add 2-3 cups of pulled porked, and then press the pork down into the pan with a spatula. Cook about 5 minutes, and then scrap the pan, turn the pork over (in one layer, if you can) and cook another 5 minutes. It will brown and crisp up, and take on some additional flavor. Great with salsa verde.
Great idea, thank you!!
Was making pork roast tonight, also! But that recipe was too high maintenance so Im opting for yours instead! Thanks again, Sarah
You are very welcome, hope it turned out yummy for you and the family!
I just made a similar recipe on Sunday. Like the previous response by Geneva, we ate our pulled pork like a taco using bib lettuce as a shell and topped it with home-made guacamole. YUM! I love passive dinners.
Great set-and-forget recipe, thanks! I’m so glad my pork allergy disappeared when I went full Paleo
Wow, glad your allergy went away also!
Pork + slow cooker is a very popular equation in my kitchen. Looks delicious, and leftovers-friendly!
Any plans for recipes using organ meats? One of my goals this year is to incorporate more organ meats (liver, heart…ok, that’s about as brave as I’m gonna get for now).
I gave your book as a Christmas present to my 5th graders teacher and she loves it (no shocker there, I knew she would!).
Thanks again for all the great posts!
I also need to get more adventurous with the organ meats. I’ll see what I can come up with! : )
Suggestion to get started: why not grind them up and add them to your meat loaf mix? By grinding, you can add them to anything you make with ground meats, such as meat loaf, tacos/burritos, spring rolls (made with tapioca flour wrappers), stuffed peppers, etc.
If you first grind the organs, then add your regular ground meat to it, grinding together, it’s all mixed up, and the flavor is less noticeable. Spices do help here.
Time-saving tip: when you get home from the store with your refrigerated meat, plan on running the organs and muscle meat together in a food processor or grinder to mix them, then subdivide the whole thing into appropriate portion sizes in zippy bags, then freeze. CW info says 4 oz. raw (makes 3 oz. cooked) is one person’s portion, so get out your 1/2 cup measuring cup (per-person measure–if that’s enough protein for your family), and use it to fill your zippy bags with the ground-up meat mix. If you regularly use the same spices for pretty much all your ground meat dishes, you can add them to the meat while grinding, and this will pre-season as well as pre-portion your mixed meat for the freezer–then all you do is defrost. This may not sound like a time-saver NOW, but when you come home tired and sore one day, your thawed pre-mixed, pre-seasoned meat pack will pay off (when you need it). It will also make your meat go further because it’s pre-portioned by you, not the farmer, not the butcher, or grocery store minions.
Sarah,
I am on day 8 of the Whole 30 and I could not have gotten this far without your cookbook. I have two children, my boy is 10 and my girl is 12. I have been “playing” with the paleo diet for 2 years, I finally decided to dial in my diet and today was the first day I feel absolutely fantastic and my workout was great too!
Last night I made the roast pork in the slow cooker…..OMG…so good! I am sitting here eating my Red Curry Beef stew….another homerun, as a matter of fact my husband just yelled to me “it’s good Honey”!
Again thank you so much, with all this great food, I hope to stay this way beyond the 30 days.
Thanks so much for your kind comment and I bet that after you are done with the 30 days there will be no looking back!!
I just made the Red Curry Beef stew from the cookbook and it’s fantastic!!
I was wondering if a pork shoulder would work with this recipe?
Absolutely! It’s basically the same cut of meat anyway.
Awesome I know what’s for dinner tonight!
My husband would LOVE this! Just may put this on our menu for next week!
One of the trainers at my gym mentioned your blog when he was talking about nutrition so I thought I’d take a look and try to figure out what’s going on with this paleo thing. I tried this pulled pork tonight and it is FANTABULOUS! And, so easy even my husband could do it (which he did actually because I cut my finger and couldn’t rub in the spices or cut up the onion). Anyhow, 3 helpings later, it’s a total hit with him and I’m sure we’ll be making this every few weeks
This just seriously rocks. Thank you for posting it!
You are very welcome and I’m so glad you found my site, thank you!
I put this in the slow cooker this morning. My house smells FANTASTIC. I can’t wait for dinner.
Thanks for the great recipes.
You are very welcome and I hope you enjoy the pulled pork.
I just started paleo and had a pork roast thawing in the fridge. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it, but am going right now to plug in the slow-cooker. Thanks!
You are very welcome, and I hope you enjoy!
I don’t have a slow cooker or pressure cooker; will this recipe work in the oven if I use a dutch oven with a lid?
Yes, absolutely! I would cook at around 275 for 6-7 hours in the oven or until the pork is easy to shred. : )
This was AWESOME!! I used it in some lettuce tacos topped with cilantro, red onion and homemade guacamole! I also paired it with the purple cabbage slaw, which was delicious as well! I’m on Day 4 of eating Paleo and I’m really enjoying it. Your cook book and website are helping me a TON!!
So glad you enjoyed the recipe Kylah and thank you so much for your kind comment! : )
What a great recipe! We tried this yesterday for dinner. Prep was easy, cleanup was easy, and even my four-year-old daughter who barely eats anything had THIRDS. Super success, thanks Sarah!
Hurray! So glad it was a success!
Just put pur roast in the crock pot. Reallt excited to try thos recipe up. It wasn’t even that expensive. Will update in 8 hours. Thanks!!!
Another great recipe, Sarah! I live for stuff like this when I need to cook in bulk for a full week’s worth of meals. I made it yesterday and portioned out 5 – 1 cup servings for my lunches during the week but there was SO much left after that so I’ll be enjoying it for dinner too.
I decided to do a review of the recipe for my From the Kitchen blog post on 1/17/12. I’ve put up plenty of links to send my readers to your site since it’s where I go for a lot of recipe ideas! Keep them coming! ~Pasquale
Hi Sarah,
I tried this recipe and it turned out great. My local grocery store didn’t have Pork Butt out so I did it with a pork shoulder instead. Do you have a good paleo BBQ sauce recipe?
Tim
I made this last night and we loved it! I also made the purple cabbage slaw which was yummy as well. Thanks for sharing these recipes!
I made this yesterday and it was fantastic! I used 3 pieces of pork loin and it was perfection. My family ate it mexican-style in wraps (they aren’t paleo), and I had it in lettuce leaves topped with guacamole. A drizzle of fresh lime juice over the meat kicked it up a delicious notch. Thanks for the easy recipe – a new favourite in our house!
Oh my goodness. I made this tonight for dinner and it was amazing! I had a little pork tenderloin in the fridge and wanted to put it in the crock pot b/c I have 3 kids under 5 and my husband is out of town and by the time dinner comes along I am exhausted! I added a little apple cider vinegar after I shredded it b/c it was a little dry. I think I cooked it on high a little to long. The vinegar made it taste even better, if that is possible. I made a purple cabbage slaw, kinda, I had a bag of broccoli slaw in the fridge so I just added the olive oil, balsamic vinegar and pepper and it turned out fantastic. My kids liked it too. The 14 month old espeacially!!! Thank you for the great ideas. Glad I found your blog.
Making this for dinner tomorrow with a pastured pork shoulder! I’ll report back!
My whole family loved your pulled pork recipe. I tried making my own chili powder recipe. All the commercial chili powders seem to have cocoa in them (my wife is allergic to cocoa). Do you have a “recipe” for making my own chili powder without the cocoa?
Thank you for the awesome recipes!
Hi Steve, Penzeys makes a chili powder without cocoa http://www.penzeys.com/cgi-bin/penzeys/p-penzeyschili3000.html as well as the Simply Organic brand! http://www.simplyorganic.com/products.php?ct=sospicesaz&cn=Chili+Powder Hope that helps!
Yes it does, I will look for those here in Corvallis. Thank you!
Well that was pretty awesome! And spicy! Thanks for this recipe!
Great recipe and so easy! I think this might become one of my paleo staples!
I made this tonight and it was incredible. I didn’t have parsley or chipotle powder, so I tossed in 1 TBLS of poultry seasoning and I served this with home made paleo mayo, guacamole, and salsa. Amazing!
Also, there was a lot of liquid left that I would normally throw out, but tonight I’ve decided to make a soup! I added water until my crock pot was almost full, and I’ve thrown in yellow and green onions, some leftover kale, a handful of cilantro, half a pack of sliced mushrooms and some sea salt. Oh yeah, a crap ton of garlic, because I love it. I’m thinking of adding some bacon, and if I had had them, I would have added pork hawks. It’s all good though, there were a enough bones in the roast that it should still flavour the stalk nicely.
The pulled pork was definitely something I’ll be making a lot more of, I thought you could only make that with BBQ sauce. I’m glad there’s a recipe that doesn’t require a shit-ton of sugar!
Thank you so much!!!
Love from Canada,
Nathalie
I made this today for our superbowl party – DELISH!!! I’d never used a dry rub before, it was so tasty! I was pleasantly surprised at how much moisture there was in the pot. I will DEFINITELY be making this again!
I made this last night … thawed my 4lb roast in the microwave for 30 min. before slow-cooking it to shreds. I was surprised how juicy this turned out, given that the recipe didn’t call for any liquid! So good–def making it again!
Wow, thank you for this recipe!! The house smells amazing, my mouth is watering. Can’t wait to have it tonight.
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Do you think it would work to do this for 12-13 hours on low? I work literally all day, and want something so easy, and tasty after work.
Thanks.
BTW, Sarah, I’ve made the slow cooked spice rubbed chicken twice… In two weeks!!
I ended up just trying it, and it totally worked, my husband and I both loved this!! 11-2 hours on low, easily shreds meat. Though I think our pork was only half the weight but I used all the spice rub, but we loved it.. so if I do more I will use more spices still…. maybe my spices aren’t as potent…. We had this with a slaw as well.. can’t wait to make it again next time pork shoulder is on sale..
Thanks for the great recipe
So glad it turned out Laura!