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Oh, Slow Cooker Kalua Pork, how do I love thee… let me count the ways! I could just feast on this for days on end, making pulled pork sliders, lettuce-wrapped tacos, slathered in barbecue sauce, or mixed in with eggs for a great breakfast scramble.
It’s so tender and smoky, I can never get enough.
The trick to cooking a Kalua Pig is to allow it to cook very low and slow. I’m talking about the lowest setting on your slow cooker for 16 hours, baby.
And it’s worth it.
What makes this Paleo AND Whole30? Well, I’m glad you asked! It turns out that many brands of liquid smoke add a bunch of unnecessary garbage in it like sugar and caramel coloring. (Ugh, why?!) But the one brand I buy and love, Wright’s Liquid Smoke, has none of that! It’s just what it says it is: smoke from wood collected, condensed, and cooled down into a liquid. And it’s freaking delicious!
This is one of the easiest recipes, and takes so little prep. You will want to find a nice pork roast, preferably not tenderloin because that cut of meat has such little fat. I like to score the meat a few times and in each one, I shove a clove of garlic. I then rub a generous amount of coarse salt all over the pork, then I place it into the slow cooker. When placing your pork roast into the slow cooker, do not add any liquid. The liquid smoke is the only liquid you will need. Set it to the lowest setting. If you have a timer, you may need to restart the timer depending on how long it will stay on. This is what my pork roast looked like once I got it into the slow cooker. You can see a giant clove of garlic sticking out that didn’t want to stay down. The other cloves disappeared nicely into the meat.
Warning: Newer slow cookers may cook hotter and faster than older slow cookers, so do keep an eye on it that it doesn’t dry out. Need a new slow cooker? Here is the #1 Best Seller on Amazon in Slow Cookers.
It takes a long time to cook, but the prep is so easy, I honestly don’t know why I don’t make this more often!