Monday morning blog posts can be tough. Especially after a football Sunday. I had planned to blog about the cupcakes I made for our Patriots crowd, but uploading all the pictures takes too long and I’m tired! So look for that post on Wednesday. But for now, I’ll tell you about the pulled pork sandwiches that I made today. I hadn’t originally planned to blog about those because for some reason I didn’t think they were really going to be blogworthy. Luckily for me, they were! Unluckily for you, I didn’t take any pictures. But the process is really simple, so even the most visual learners should have no problem.
Matt made pulled pork for Dinner Club once and the sandwiches were awesome. I did basically the same thing this time, but I didn’t make my own barbeque sauce. It was hard to rationalize making my own since we have a gallon of Sweet Baby Ray’s in the fridge. And SBR’s is hard to beat. This slow cooker method is really good and really easy! Here’s what I did:
Ingredients:
2 three lb. boneless pork tenderloins
1 white onion
4-5 cloves garlic
whole cloves
salt and pepper
olive oil
beer (I used Newcastle)
water
The pork should slow cook for about 10 hours. I decided to set the crockpot overnight… which sounded like a good idea, but it grossed me out to wake up to the smell of pork. So plan ahead knowing that you need 10ish hours of slow cooking, then time to cool, pull, and reheat slowly with the bbq sauce.
First, rub the pork loins with olive oil, salt and pepper. Insert cloves into the pork – about 10 per loin. Slice the garlic cloves and smush into the loin as much as you can. Then slice the onions into rings. Layer the bottom of a crockpot with half the onions, then place the loins on top (it’s okay if they kind of overlap). Top with remaining onions, then pour in the whole beer and add a bit of water if necessary. You don’t want the pork to be totally submerged; you just want there to be lots of moisture in the crockpot.
Slow cook for about ten hours on low. You could certainly cook for a shorter time on higher heat, but the overnight worked for us (overpowering morning scent notwithstanding). I got up and shredded the pork this morning, then added the bbq sauce and brought it back to a nice hot temp. I kept it in the crockpot on the warm setting until people arrived, and we were good to go!
Brioche buns are best, but any kind of hamburger-type bun will do. Pulled pork sandwiches are great for a crowd, and now we have lots left over for Dinner Club this week!
- Elizabeth
One must exhibit self-control in the face of pulled pork sandwiches. It is not wise to stand over the crockpot with a fork, go for a 5 mile run, come back and immediately sit down to a pulled pork sandwich.