Crock Pot Pulled Pork

Our family went to the county fair this week, and we ended up spending a ton of money on fair food. The food wasn't as good as I remembered, except for the pulled pork. My husband bought a sandwich for $5.00, which is pretty expensive in my opinion, but it tasted great and was filled with pork. They wrapped the sandwich in foil and gave him a fork to eat it with because of the mess potential.

I thought, why haven't I ever tried to make pulled pork? I love it, and I've only had it a few times in my life. I searched for pulled pork recipes on Allrecipes.com, my favorite recipe website. Whenever I want to attempt making a meal I've never tried before, I search there first and sort my results by rating. Then, I read a lot of the user comments to see how they improved the recipe. Here's what I ended up creating:

• 4 lb. pork shoulder, fresh or thawed
• 24 oz. of root beer
• 18 oz. bottle of BBQ sauce

Place the pork shoulder in the crock pot and pour the root beer over it. Let it soak overnight in the refrigerator. The next day, flip the pork shoulder over if not completely covered by root beer. If you have a small enough crock pot and your root beer covered the pork, you can skip these flipping steps.

Cook on low for 6 hours. Halfway through cooking, flip the pork one more time so each side can cook in the root beer. When the 6 hours is up, drain the root beer from the crock pot. I did this by removing the pork, placing it in a pyrex dish, and dumping the root beer from the crock pot.

If there is a bone in your pork shoulder, remove it. This should be fairly easy because the pork will slide right off the bone. Place the pork back in the crockpot, shred it up with two forks as much as you'd like, and stir in the BBQ sauce. Cook for another hour. I used Sweet Baby Ray's Hickory and Brown Sugar sauce, and it was amazing. This recipe isn't too saucy, which is prefect for us. If you like a ton of sauce, I'd suggest using two bottles.

Serve the pork on your favorite buns or rolls. I don't quite know the servings on this, but it's a lot. We are big eaters and this made enough for seconds and leftovers. This would be great for a summer party, and it's nice because the crock pot won't heat up your house.

If you'd like to see the recipe I adapted mine from, click here. She uses a 2 pound tenderloin, which reduces the fat, but you'll pay more and reduce the number of servings.