On Sunday I received a text that spoke directly to my heart.

The text came from my friend Mary, and to be fair, we had finished a 17 mile run just hours earlier. But if I’m going to be honest here, I will admit that I usually feel like I want to eat everything, regardless of how far I’ve run or even whether I’ve run at all.

I have a lot of cravings that tend to dictate what Mike and I eat for dinner.

As you probably guessed, On Sunday like my friend Mary, I too felt like eating everything. To handle this feeling in the most mature and self-controlled way possible, I ate a handful of sour jelly beans and drove to the supermarket to buy ingredients for one of my favorite comfort food meals – slow cooker pulled pork. I felt like I needed comfort food – who doesn’t?!?

Knowing Mike and I couldn’t eat it until Monday night practically drove me insane, but it was well worth the wait. Absolutely delish! And I got kudos for making pork (Mike’s all-time fav meat dish that I rarely make).

Seasoned Pork ready to start slow cooking.

Spice Rub!

What You Need:

• A boneless pork shoulder (also commonly called pork butt) between 3 and 5 pounds
• One large sweet potato, grated or shredded (I used my food processor)
• One large yellow onion, thinly sliced
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 3-4 scallions, chopped
• 1 1/4 cup beer (I used a brown ale. If you don’t want to use beer, the same amount of vegetable or chicken broth works too)
• 1 tbsp brown sugar
• 1 tbsp chili powder
• 1 tbsp salt
• 1 tbsp ground red pepper (cayenne)
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
• 2 cups of your favorite BBQ sauce (I used Thicker Style Hot Bone Suckin’ Sauce)

What You Do:

Line the bottom of the crock pot dish with the graded or shredded sweet potato, the thinly sliced onion, minced garlic and chopped scallions.

Pour the beer over the mixture. Drink the rest!

In a small bowl, mix together the brown sugar, chili powder, salt, cayenne, cumin and cinnamon.

Prepare your pork. I sliced it into large chunks and cut off as much fat as I could.

Rub the spice mixture over the pork pieces and place the pork over the onion mixture in the crock pot dish.

Set the crock pot on High for 6-8 hours OR on Low for 8-10 hours.

When it’s ready, spoon the pork out of the crock pot onto a separate plate.

Drain the liquid left in the crock pot through a strainer and INTO A POT so it doesn’t go down the drain. (This is only important to do if you do not wish to use BBQ sauce. If that’s the case, see below for the Pro Tip).

Return the onion mixture that was captured in the strainer to the crock pot. Return the pork to the crock pot and with a fork, begin pulling it apart until it is all looking like goodness.

Add your BBQ sauce and it’s ready to serve!

Pro Tip: If you do not wish to use BBQ sauce, pour the strained liquid back into the pulled pork mixture slowly until the pork is moistened (you may not need all of it!)

Pro Tip #2: Select a gluten-free BBQ sauce for a totally GF meal!

Pro Tip #3: Take advantage of the fact that this recipe allows you to say “pork butt” multiple times in conversation.

Smuttynose Old Brown Dog – a perfect beer for this recipe!