Tender, juicy pulled pork made easy – our homemade recipe is oven-baked to perfection, with a flavorful spice rub that will have you licking your fingers!

BBQ Pulled Pork

Looking for a delicious and easy pulled pork recipe? Look no further! This recipe is perfect for a crowd and requires minimal ingredients and effort. The pork cooks in its own juices in the oven, with a flavorful spice rub, and is so tender that it shreds easily with a fork!

I’ve collected recipes for as long as I’ve been an adult. Wednesday was the day my local newspaper printed recipes and I eagerly read through those to see which ones I wanted to try. Most of the magazines I subscribed to also printed recipes and those had the advantage of beautiful pictures as well.

These days I don’t get paper newspapers or magazines but I have 30 years of ones I did collect!

This pulled pork recipe is inspired by a recipe clipping from 2014. Yes, sometimes it takes me a while to try something!

As a mom and grandmother, when I have the gang over, I will have anywhere from 8 to 13 people, so I love recipes that will feed a crowd. But I don’t want to spend the day cooking something.

This recipe was perfect. It required a fairly simple preparation, sitting in the refrigerator, and then a long baking time. Very easy actually!

My family loved this pulled pork! It made enough that everyone could eat as much as they wanted and there were plenty of leftovers. We made sandwiches and topped our pork with traditional Texas barbecue fixin’s: homemade BBQ sauce, onions, and sweet pickles.

This is the best pulled pork recipe I’ve ever tried!

This way of making a pulled pork roast was perfect! I was able to prep the day before and only had the roasting part on the day of my potluck. Overall, the roast bakes about 6 hours, followed by an hour or so resting. I let it rest about two hours and it was still hot but easy to handle.

The roast had a savory sweet crust all over. Inside the pork was flavorful and tender with the perfect texture. The spice rub is simple – just 7 ingredients – but the taste is incredible! And no liquid smoke in sight!

BBQ pulled pork was a hit with my family and I will definitely make this again and again!

— Sara

Ingredients

1 (6 ½ pound) bone-in pork shoulder or pork butt
3 Tablespoons Dijon mustard
1/3 cup dark brown sugar
3 Tablespoon kosher salt
2 Tablespoon smoked paprika
1 Tablespoon chili powder
1 ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
½ teaspoon garlic powder

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Instructions

This actual prep time for this recipe is just a few minutes, but for the best flavor, you will want to allow time for the spice rub to sit on the pork and chill in the fridge before baking. Cook time is about 6 hours, and you will want to let the meat rest for a couple hours after that, before shredding. Detailed step by step instructions follow.

Preparation

Trim excess fat from pork if needed, leaving about ¼ inch cap on roast. Pat dry with paper towels.
Stir together the brown sugar, salt, and spices in a bowl.
Place the roast on a large piece of plastic wrap.
Spread mustard on the pork and coat with all of the sugar spice mixture.
Wrap tightly in plastic wrap and place on a tray and chill for a few hours, or overnight.

Roasting

Preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit and line a roasting pan with foil.
Place the rack back in the roasting pan. Unwrap pork and place on rack.
Roast uncovered for 4 hours.
Remove roast from oven and wrap roast in double thick foil. Put roast back on rack and return to the oven for 2 more hours (internal temp of at least 190).

Shredding the Pork:

Let stand for 1 to 2 hours, still wrapped in foil.
When cool enough to handle, remove pork from foil and use two forks to pull apart the meat.
As you pull the pork into pieces, you can remove any large pieces of fat as needed.

Serve With:

The great thing about this recipe is that it is so versatile! Here are some of our favorite ways to enjoy pulled pork:

Serve as a main course with your favorite BBQ side dishes and accompaniments, such as sweet pickles, Southern baked beans, fresh onions, coleslaw, and homemade barbecue sauce. I pour sauce all over mine because I just love our homemade sauce recipe!
Use it to make pork sandwiches with your favorite homemade rolls , buns, or bread.
Make pork nachos or pork tacos.

Prep Tips

Types of Pork – You can use a pork shoulder or pork butt (aka Boston Butt) for this recipe. I used pork butt since that is what my store had. Use the bone-in option to get the most flavor from this recipe. It will easily pull away from the bone after cooking for hours!
Yield – A 6.5 pound roast makes about 20 servings, at least that’s what we came up with when we served this at a family dinner.
Spice Rub – After you coat the pork in the spice rub, wrap it and stick it in the refrigerator for a few hours, or overnight if you have time or want to plan ahead. I went with the overnight option since it has long baking and resting times. That way I knew it would be ready in time for dinner. This is a great recipe to prep the day before and simply bake the day of your party.
Cooking to Temp – To get the temperature of the meat at the end, I poked the thermometer through the foil so that I could leave it wrapped after roasting.

More Pork Recipes To Try

More BBQ Side Dish Recipes

Homemade Pulled Pork Recipe (Printable Recipe Card)

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