Slow Cooker Asian Pork

Ingredients

3 pound pork shoulder
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon chili flakes
For the sauce:
⅔ cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons sesame oil
2 tablespoons hoisin sauce
4 tablespoons dark brown sugar
2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
½ cup honey
8 small or 4 large garlic cloves, chopped
2-inch knob ginger, peeled and chopped
juice from 2 limes, about ¼ cup
To garnish:
freshly chopped cilantro
3 green onions, chopped
Honey-wasabi mayonnaise
1 cup mayonnaise
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon wasabi
toasted sesame seeds, about 1 tablespoon

Takes 135 Minutes, serves 8.

Instructions

Bring pork to room temperature one hour before cooking. Combine salt, pepper and chili flakes in a small bowl and rub over pork. Leave pork to sit for 1 hour.
Prepare sauce: Place all of the ingredients for the sauce into a medium-sized bowl and whisk together until sugar dissolves and ingredients are well combined.
Divide sauce and prepare pork: Place pork in the canister of slow cooker. Strain 1 cup of the sauce, cover and set aside. Return the garlic and ginger from the strainer back in with the remaining sauce and pour over pork. Place lid on slow cooker. Set cook temperature to low and cook time to 8 hours, turning the pork over once at the halfway mark.
Remove cooked pork to a platter. Strain liquid from pot through a sieve into a separator. Remove any string from pork and gently pull pork apart using two forks. Transfer back into the canister of the slow cooker. Add just enough of the liquid from the pot so that the pulled pork soaks it up, about 1 cup. Add the reserved sauce and stir to combine.
Prepare honey-wasabi mayo: Place sesame oil, honey and wasabi in a small bowl and stir to combine. Drizzle over mayo and gently fold to combine. Stir in sesame seeds.
Serve with rice or on buns with suggested garnishes.

Need an easy dinner idea that’s big on flavour and serves a crowd? Try this SLOW COOKER ASIAN PORK.

Let’s face it, these days we could all use a break from the daily routine of meal planning. This recipe is a sure-fire hit for lots of good reasons. It’s easy because it’s made using a slow cooker, plus the pre- and post-cooking steps are simple too. It also results in really flavourful pork that is tender and juicy, just the way we like it. Lastly, you can serve this meal however it suits your needs – as a relaxed weeknight supper or the main dish at a party or games night. Our SLOW COOKER ASIAN PORK is amazing.

We expect you’ll love this recipe as much as we do, so PIN the recipe to a favourite main, party food or weeknight dinner board. You can also BOOKMARK this page for easy access and SHARE it with friends too. Don’t forget to share it on socials too, remembering to add #weekendatthecottage when you do. We love seeing you enjoy our recipes!

Here’s why SLOW COOKER ASIAN PORK works:

INGREDIENTS

After picking up the pork shoulder for this recipe, assembling the other ingredients should be a breeze. I’m hoping everything else is now standard in your pantry. Things like soy sauce, hoisin, rice wine vinegar and toasted sesame oil are all wonderful ingredients to keep on hand and they work well together in this recipe. If you’ve got them at the ready, make our famous ASIAN SALAD DRESSING too. Yummy and yummy!

PORK SHOULDER

Although you can make this recipe using a pork butt, only do so if you can’t get pork shoulder. Ideally, check with your butcher to get a shoulder that has some decent marbling and a bit of fat. Leaving the fat on ensures the meat stays juicy, and you can cut it away once the pork has cooked.

SEASON

Go slow when seasoning the pork shoulder with kosher salt, pepper and chili flakes; try to rub the mixture into all the nooks and crannies. The second part of the seasoning involves a pre-cook rest period where the seasoned meat comes to room temperature. This hour before cooking allows the seasoning to flavour the meat, but it also prepares the shoulder for slow, even cooking. Keep that meat juicy.

SAUCE

The sauce for this slow cooker dinner recipe is filled with flavour. It has a pleasing saltiness from the soy sauce plus a pop of sweetness from the honey and additional sweetness and caramel notes from the brown sugar. We also added a bit of tang with the addition of both the rice wine vinegar and freshly squeezed lime juice. The real kicker comes from the combination of garlic and ginger which gives the sauce its “wow” factor.

COOKING

Using a slow cooker makes the entire process seamless and requires very little effort. If you don’t already have a slow cooker in your small appliance arsenal, I’ll list a few options for purchase down in the Amazon links below. When making the recipe remember to flip the pork shoulder at the four-hour mark. Otherwise try not to lift the lid; leave those steamy liquids in the pot. One last thing to remember: you can cook the pork overnight so all you need to do the next day is pull it apart, add the sauce and serve.

The pork is juicy and tender when pulled apart

BEFORE AND AFTER

One of the things that sets this recipe apart from others is the way we put that delicious sauce to good use. To begin, we’re passing about a cup of the sauce through a strainer and setting that quantity aside. The remaining sauce, plus the garlic and ginger bits from the strainer, is then poured onto the pork and cooked slowly. Once the cook time is reached, the pork is removed from the slow cooker and pulled apart. The liquid from the pot is strained and separated. Once the fat has been discarded, we return the pork to the pot with about a cups of the pot liquid and more of that full-flavoured reserved sauce. Prepare to be amazed by the deliciousness of this SLOW COOKER ASIAN PORK.

GARNISHES

We wanted to keep the garnishes for this dish easy too. Chopped green onions and cilantro fit the bill perfectly. We also discovered that another one of our popular garnishes works well too; we crafted a wonderful HONEY-WASABI MAYO for our GRILLED SHISHITO PEPPERS and thought, let’s try it on this. It’s just the thing to give the pork a hit of sweet spice that’s very pleasing to the palate.

SERVE

We mentioned off the top how versatile this recipe is. If you plan to serve it for dinner, let’s say on a weeknight, just cook up a pot of jasmine, basmati or brown rice. Spoon the pulled pork onto the rice and add those fabulous garnishes – dinner’s ready!

Let’s say you’re thinking a pot of this deliciousness might be just the thing for your next movie, game or party night – try this! Bake off a batch of our POTATO DINNER ROLLS but form smaller rolls, maybe 16 instead of 12. These smaller rolls will help you craft two-bite sliders that party people just can’t seem to get enough of. Garnish them with the chopped green onions and cilantro plus a drizzle of the honey-wasabi mayo and they’ll disappear in no time.

In case you missed it, let me say it one more time: whether you’re serving this for a chill weeknight dinner or a grab-and-go party snack, this pulled pork idea always fits the bill.