Meals · Roasts, ribs & slow cooker

Slow cooker pulled pork

Name: Slow cooker pulled pork
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 480 min
Total time: 495 min
Yield: 8 servings
Ingredients: 1.4 kg pork shoulder, boneless, trimmed of the thick cap; 1 tbsp paprika; 1 tbsp brown sugar; 2 tsp ground cumin; 1 1/2 tsp salt; 1 tsp black pepper; 1 cup chicken broth; 1/2 cup barbecue sauce

Pork shoulder rubbed with paprika and cumin and left alone for eight hours, then shredded into its own juices with a restrained hand of barbecue sauce. How you serve it decides the meal: over slaw it's one dish, in a white bun it's another, and the numbers split accordingly.

Time: 495 min (15 prep + 480 cook)
Servings: 8
Per serving: 363 kcal
Protein: 31 g

Both directions are legitimate — the score measures fullness per calorie, not virtue. Every version is the same dish, rebalanced.

Ingredients

1.4 kg pork shoulder, boneless, trimmed of the thick cap1400 g

Rub

1 tbsp paprika7 g
1 tbsp brown sugar15 g
2 tsp ground cumin5 g
1 1/2 tsp salt8 g
1 tsp black pepper2 g

1 cup chicken broth240 g

To finish

1/2 cup barbecue sauce120 g

Every ingredient links to its food page — same data, same score, same formula.

Steps

Mix the rub and massage it over the whole joint. Overnight in the fridge if you can; an hour if you can't.
Set the pork in the slow cooker, pour the broth around (not over) it, and cook on low 8 hours, until it gives no resistance to a fork.
Lift it out, pull it apart with two forks, and skim the fat off the cooking liquid.
Return the meat with a few spoonfuls of the skimmed juices and the barbecue sauce. Half a cup for the whole batch seasons it; the usual full bottle turns a roast into candy.

Bun or slaw?

The pork is the same either way — the plate isn't. Over the coleslaw on this site it's a complete meal in the 60s; in a soft white bun with extra sauce it eats like a burger. Neither is wrong, and the difference is exactly the kind the tuner is for.

Why this score

moderately filling

No single route carries this one — a moderate amount of protein, volume and fiber.

Three routes to fullness — one is enough

35% of kcal

59% water

2 g/Mcal

What pulls it down

How scores work

Computed on the finished dish, not an average of the parts: 2901 kcal goes into the pot, 1797 g of ingredients comes out as ~1250 g of food → 232 kcal per 100 g. Cooking moves water, and energy density is the score's biggest lever — so we show the math. Full formula here.

Per

Calories: 232
Protein: (35%); 20 g
Fat: (55%); 14 g
Carbohydrates: (10%); 6 g
of which sugar: 5 g
Fiber: <1 g
Sodium: 464 mg

Percentages are the share of calories from each macronutrient.

Computed from the ingredients' USDA data — nothing typed by hand. Every number is traceable, every score recomputable.

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Photo: AI-generated. Nutrition and score are computed from the ingredients with the published formula — this recipe hasn't been kitchen-tested by us yet.