# Slow Cooker Pulled Pork Sandwiches

Slow Cooker Pulled Pork Sandwiches — a hard recipe with 5 main ingredients, ready in about 5 hr and serving 8. Check which of its ingredients are on sale at grocery stores near you.

- **Time:** 5 hr
- **Serves:** 8
- **Difficulty:** hard
- **Tags:** dinner, pork, american
- **Source:** https://savingrecipes.com/recipes/pulled-pork-sandwiches

## Ingredients

- 3 lb pork shoulder
- 1 cup BBQ sauce
- 8 burger buns
- Coleslaw mix
- 1 onion
- Salt & pepper _(pantry staple)_

## Instructions

1. Rub pork with salt; slow-cook on low 8 hr (or 300°F oven 4–5 hr) with sliced onion.
2. Shred, discard fat, and toss with BBQ sauce and juices.
3. Pile onto buns with slaw.

## Tips

- Don't add liquid to the slow cooker. Pork shoulder releases plenty of its own, and extra liquid gives you boiled pork instead of the concentrated result you want.
- Shred it while still warm. Cold pork shoulder firms up and becomes much harder work.
- Sauce it after shredding, not before. Sauce added at the start dilutes into the cooking liquid and burns at the edges.

## Substitutions

- **Pork shoulder:** Also sold as pork butt or Boston butt — same cut, and the one you want. Beef chuck works the same way for pulled beef. Avoid loin: too lean, and it shreds into dry threads.
- **BBQ sauce:** Any style. Vinegar-based Carolina sauce cuts the richness better than sweet Kansas City sauce, worth knowing if it tastes heavy.
- **Burger buns:** Brioche is standard; ciabatta holds up better to sauce; lettuce cups for low-carb.
- **Coleslaw:** Pickled red onion or plain pickles. Some acid and crunch against the rich pork is the point — don't skip it entirely.

## Storage & reheating

Keeps 4 days refrigerated and freezes 3 months — one of the best batch-cooking dishes there is. Freeze it in the juices rather than dry, and reheat gently with a splash of liquid. It reheats better than almost any other meat.

## Common questions

### Why won't my pork shred?

It's undercooked, not overcooked. Pork shoulder needs about 195–205°F internally for the collagen to break down — well past 'done'. If it resists the fork, give it another hour.

### Do I need to sear it first?

It adds flavour but isn't essential in a slow cooker, where the surface never crisps anyway. In the oven method it's more worthwhile.

### How much per person?

Raw pork shoulder loses about 40% of its weight. 3 lb raw yields roughly 1.75 lb cooked — eight generous sandwiches.


_Photo: Infrogmation of New Orleans — CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pulled_pork_sandwich_-_%22Naked%22.jpg)_