This incredible pork loin is cooked long and slow in a crock pot / slow cooker until it's fork tender, yet still sliceable. Make this with shoulder, loin or scotch, and see note 6 for other cook methods! Pork loin is a lean cut of meat so using a Honey Butter Garlic sauce is ideal to add juiciness and moisture, as well as injecting tons of flavour into the flesh.
Ingredients
- 1.75 - 2.5 kg / / 3.5 - 5lb pork loin, shoulder/boston butt or scotch fillet, skinless (Note 1)
- 1.5 tbsp olive oil , separated
- Spice Rub:
- 2 tsp paprika
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 1 tsp onion powder
- 2 tsp thyme
- 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper , optional
- 2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp pepper
- Honey Butter Sauce:
- 3/4 cup / 225 g honey
- 125 g / 1/2 cup butter , unsalted
- 5 cloves garlic , minced
- 1/4 cup / 65 ml cider vinegar
- 1/2 tsp salt and pepper , each
- Thickener:
- 3 tsp cornflour/cornstarch mixed with splash of water
Instructions
- Spice Rub: Rub pork with about 1 tsp oil. Mix Rub together then sprinkle over pork. Pat to adhere all over.
- Brown: Heat 1 tbsp oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add pork and sear all around until deep golden brown (don't let spices burn). Place pork in slow cooker.
- Honey Butter Sauce: Wipe pan. Add butter and melt. Add garlic and cook for 1 minute until golden. Add remaining ingredients, mix, simmer rapidly for 30 seconds.
- Slow Cook: Pour Sauce over pork. Cover slow cooker. Cook on LOW for 10 hours (Note 6 for oven, IP and pressure cooker). Check: Pork should be fork tender.
- Remove pork onto serving platter, cover loosely with foil (10 - 20 minutes rest).
- Pour all juices in slow cooker into large saucepan. Add cornflour water mixture, mix.
- Thicken Sauce: Simmer on medium high for 5 minutes or until it reduces down to a syrupy consistency (Note 2).
- Slice pork into thick slices (1.5 - 2 cm / 3/5 - 4/5" thick). Serve with Honey Butter Sauce!
Recipe Adapted From recipetineats.com
Notes
1. Pork cuts: This recipe is ideal made with pork loin, shoulder / Boston butt (boneless) or scotch fillet/neck, these are the 3 cuts I've make this recipe with. This is a highly flexible recipe that is ideal for any roast-size cut of pork, lean or well marbled.
Pictured in post with pork loin and shoulder. Even pork loin comes in all sorts of different cuts - sometimes just the eye (so it's super lean, looks like a fatter tenderloin), sometimes it's cut wider so you get some marbling the side which you can see in the first photo .
Needs to be made with skinless pork, trimmed of excess fat (don't want loads of surface fat melting into braising liquid which becomes the sauce).
Pork Tenderloin - Because it's thinner, make the following recipe adjustments: Use 2 tenderloins (about 1 kg / 2 lb total) and use the sauce as written (ie don't scale recipe down). Simmer the sauce for 5 minutes to reduce slightly then pour over tenderloin in crockpot. If tenderloin is too long for the slow cooker, cut in half to make 2 shorter piece. Cook on low for 4 hours or until the centre registers 63C/145F with a meat thermometer (this will be juicy sliceable, not fork tender) OR for 5 hours until the tenderloin is tender enough to pry apart with 2 forks (sliceable after resting but fork tender). Rest while you make sauce per recipe then slice.
Other pork - Am confident this can also be made with pork leg, knuckle and other pork roasting cuts but I haven't tried. Also a reader asked about Sirloin Tip - that would be ideal for this recipe.
4. Different pork sizes:
1 kg / 2lb - 8 hours on low
1.5 - 2.5kg / 3 - 5lb: 10 hours per recipe
3kg / 6lb: 11 - 12 hours
Use times closest to your pork size. Do not use for multiple tenderloins - see Note 1.
5. Sauce reduction: Reduction time to thicken dependent on how much juice comes out of the pork. Go by eye - when sauce is thin maple syrup consistency, it's ready (will thicken bit more when it cools a bit)
6. Other cook methods:
* Pressure Cooker - 1 hour 20 minutes on HIGH. To save time, this is how I did the pork in the 2nd photo in post.
* Instant Pot - Brown pork in IP, remove, melt butter and make Sauce in IP, then add pork back in, spoon over sauce. Then either cook using Pressure Cooker time or Slow Cooker time. Remove pork and make Sauce using sauté function.
* OVEN - Not 100% sure this will work with loin given it's such a lean cut of meat. It will work with fattier pork - pork shoulder and scotch fillet roast are ideal. This recipe is essentially the slow cooker version of this Brown Sugar Glazed Roast Pork (Oven Roasted).
Directions: do not brown on the stove, keep them whole. Season pork, make saue, place in pan with extra 1 cup water. Cover with foil, roast at 140C/290F for about 3 hours or until fork tender. Uncover and roast to brown the pork - about 30 min. Remove pork, transfer all juices into a saucepan and follow recipe to thicken with cornflour/cornstarch. There will be less sauce because there's less pork juices when you oven roast, so if necessary, top up with water to get the sauce consistency per video (like maple syrup).
7. MAKE AHEAD - I brown the pork and make the sauce the night before, pour it into the slow cooker then remove the insert and keep it in the fridge overnight. Then I put it in the slow cooker in the morning so it's ready that evening. If preparing ahead more than 12 hours or so, keep the sauce separate (because it will make the pork sweat).
Leftovers - Keep in the fridge for 3 days, or freezer for 3 months. I pour the sauce over it, it soaks through the pork and I love it.
8. Nutrition - per serving, assuming a 2 kg/4lb pork loin and 8 servings with all sauce consumed (which is unlikely).
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