Ingredients
- 5 lbs pork tenderloin or pork shoulder
- 8-12 whole cloves
- 3 yellow onion (large) thinly sliced
- Salt to taste
- Black pepper to taste
- Garlic powder to taste
- 1 ½ cups water
- 40 oz barbecue sauce
- Hamburger buns (optional) for serving
Don't Want to Plan? I Got You.Every Saturday I share a full week of dinners, sides, and a dessert — with the grocery list already done. Come grab this week's Weekly Meal Plans!Equipment
Crock-Pot If you got a crock pot for nothing except this, it would still be worth it! I take mine to the beach with us on vacation!
Cutting Boards You need something to thinly slice the onions on. But I also love my cutting boards as decorations.
Sharp Chef's Knives These are the knives I use. They are excellent and reasonably priced.
Method Start Cooking
- Place the pork in the crockpot fat side up. Season generously all over the top with salt, pepper, and garlic powder — be heavier-handed than feels right.
- Poke the whole cloves down into the meat, spacing them out across the roast.
- Layer the sliced onions over the top of the pork and down around the sides.
- Pour the water in at the side of the crockpot, not over the pork, so it doesn't wash the seasoning off the top.
- Cover and cook on LOW for 8 to 10 hours, or overnight.
- Lift the pork out onto a large pan or platter. Remove every whole clove — they give beautiful flavor but nobody wants to bite into one. Pull off and discard any big pieces of fat.
- Skim the drippings and keep about 1 cup. Discard the rest.
- Shred the pork with two forks or your hands once it has cooled enough to handle.
- Mash the cooked onions until soft and broken down, then return them to the crockpot along with the shredded pork and the reserved cup of drippings.
- Pour in the whole 40 oz bottle of barbecue sauce and stir until everything is coated.
- Cover and cook on HIGH for 3 to 4 hours, until hot through and starting to caramelize a little around the edges.
- Serve piled on buns with coleslaw, potato salad, pasta salad, or chips.
Nutrition
Video
Notes
Cut: Pork tenderloin costs a little more per pound than shoulder, but a shoulder loses so much to fat that you end up with less meat on the table. Either one works — this is a forgiving recipe.
Weight: Five pounds is what to aim for, but buy what your store has. Anything in the four-to-six-pound range cooks the same way; just keep the water at about 1 1/2 cups.
Timing: Overnight is the easiest way to do it — set it before bed and wake up to a house that smells incredible. But you can start it in the morning for dinner just as easily. Low and slow is forgiving, so a couple of hours either direction will not hurt it.
Frozen pork: A frozen pork tenderloin can go straight into the cooler on a road trip — it works as an ice pack and thaws by the time you arrive. Thaw it fully in the refrigerator before it goes in the crockpot.
Barbecue sauce: A full 40 oz bottle makes it good and saucy. Use less if your crowd likes it drier.
Pour the water down the side of the crock, never over the top of the meat. That one move is the difference between seasoned pork and washed-off pork. Do not throw the onions out. They cook down into something almost jammy, and mashing them back in is where a lot of the flavor lives. Keep only about a cup of the drippings. Any more and the barbecue sauce goes thin. Shred it with your hands once it is cool enough. You will feel the fatty pieces you want to pull out, which you cannot do with a fork. That last stretch on HIGH is not optional. It is what gives you the little charred bits around the edge of the crock.
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