Seriously Easy Overnight Pulled Pork

This fork tender overnight pulled pork recipe will have your friends thinking you're an accomplished chef. One of the easiest and most forgiving large cuts of meat there is. You simply season it with flavors you're going to use in your recipe, and throw it in the oven or slow cooker overnight. When you wake up in the morning your nose will be greeted with intoxicating scent of roasting pork.

For this recipe you can use bone in- or boneless shoulder. In the grocery store you might find it as a picnic roast, picnic shoulder, pork butt, or boston butt. You can use skinless or skin-on as well. I like to use skin on and crisp it at the end for what we call in the south "cracklin". This cracklin can be chopped and mixed throughout your pulled pork.

I use this recipe to meal prep and freeze small portions. Throughout the week it becomes barbecue, thai curry, tacos, pupusas, pretty much anything you can think of.

How to make overnight pulled pork

Preheat your oven to 250F. If you're a die hard purist you may be shocked to see a temperature this high, but in my experience most home ovens just are not accurate at temperatures lower than this. To ensure success we're going to go at that temperature.

Season your pork butt with salt, pepper, sugar and any other seasonings that lend to your future preparations. If you're making Latin American food add cumin, and chili powder. If you're making bbq add your favorite spice rub. I generally always use salt, sugar, mustard, and black pepper.

Wrap the pork in parchment paper. Then wrap it in foil. This is a necessary step because the acid in the mustard will eat holes in the parchment paper. Double wrapping it will help keep it moist for the long overnight cooking.

If you have a roasting rack use it to raise the pork from the bottom of the sheet pan. Cook overnight for 8 hours or up to 10 hours.

The pork will done when you can slide a butter knife through it with no resistance. The pork should easily shreddable with two forks. If you continue to cook past 10 hrs the pork will lose texture and become more stringy and less defined.

At this point if you're using the skin on version remove it from the oven and let the pork rest for 10-20 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 500F. Once the oven is preheated cook for 10-20 more minutes until the skin begins to puff and create an extremely crispy cracklin.

Let the pork rest for 20-30 minutes until its cool enough to handle and shred. Serve as is with a sauce like salsa roja or incorporate into other recipes.