If you have a slow cooker, one of the first recipes you probably tried with it was a pulled pork recipe. For those who have never made pulled pork, it’s a simple and delicious meal which involves slow cooking a big chunk of pork with a marinade and letting it sit to get nice and soft and flavorful. Still, the recipe we have today puts a great twist on your classic barbecue pulled pork.
Instead of making a simple sauce for your meat, this recipe uses honey, brown sugar and balsamic vinegar to create rich and complex flavors that you and your family will love. What’s more is that there’s also a way to add some crispy texture to the entire thing at the end if you so choose. As an added bonus, it also cooks relatively quickly!
Here’s what you’ll need to get started:
- 3 pounds of pork tenderloin
- 1/2 cup of balsamic vinegar
- 1 cup of water
- 1/4 cup of honey
- 2 tablespoons of soy sauce
- 3 tablespoons of brown sugar
- 3 cloves of garlic, minced
- 1/2 teaspoon of black pepper
- 1 tablespoon of cornstarch
- 2 tablespoons of water
Here’s what you have to do:
1. First, make sure your slow cooker is prepared by spraying it down with cooking oil or wiping it with some oil on a paper towel. Once that’s done, put your pork tenderloin in the bottom of it.
2. In a mixing bowl on the side, combine your balsamic vinegar, water, honey, soy sauce, garlic, black pepper and brown sugar. Stir it up with a fork or a whisk until it’s mixed together and then pour that over your meat.
3. After it’s all saturated, set the slow cooker on high for two hours and close it up.
4. Once it’s had some time to cook, take the meat out and put it on a cutting board, letting it rest for about 10 minutes.
5. Next, get your cornstarch and mix it with water until it makes a slurry. Get the leftover liquid from the slow cooker and throw it into a medium saucepan, skimming the fat off the surface first. Bring that to a boil and then add in your cornstarch mixture. Cook the entire thing for three to four minutes, until the mixture thickens slightly.
7. Finally, get two forks and start shredding your meat into little strands (or to your own desired texture and consistency). Once you’re done with that, pour the sauce on top, toss the entire thing and it’s ready to serve!
Though this recipe is simple enough, there are still things you can do to give it a little bit of extra life. If you follow the steps above, the pork will come out as relatively soft and stringy—but some people like to have a little bit of extra texture. To give your meat some crispy edges, try broiling it before you do the final steps of saucing it.
To do this, shred your meat like you normally would and then spread it in an even layer on a baking sheet with a rim on it (to catch any grease that may result). Broil it in the oven for about three to five minutes until the edges get crispy and start to sizzle. After that, you can throw it back into a container and sauce it like you normally would! As always, there’s always room to experiment once you’ve got the basics of the recipe down. You can always add more garlic if you’d like or try serving it with different sides—some buns and some Carolina-style barbecue sauce, maybe?
Have you tried this recipe out yourself? If you have, let us know what you think in the comments area below.
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