BBQ pulled pork - slow cooker style

Well, we have survived a week of bed rest. Not enjoyable. Much harder than it sounds. We went through a few days of angry denial and a few added hours of "why me?" but we did make it through. Bed rest is like house arrest really. I am to be laying down most of the day. I can get up for the restroom, shower, get food and that's about it. I'm not 100% good every day but I'm not less than 90% good every day so I think that's ok. What has helped me mentally is really seeing the cause and effect of bed rest. If I stay horizontal and take my meds every 6 hours, then I don't contract much. If I try to do too much then my body tells me immediately.

Today I wasn't perfect. I was so sick of the house that DH took me for a car ride through the country. I love the country roads around here. So beautiful! I also helped with dinner but the total number of minutes on my feet were less than 30 minutes. This was an easy dish and I'm going to share it because I sort of compiled a couple different recipes to get this product.

I used the directions for pulled pork I found off of pinterest. That recipe did not have a rub to the pork and I wanted a rub so I found one online that had ingredients I liked and adjusted some of the quantities according to my common sense (I didn't want 3 tbs of salt!) I then went looking for a BBQ sauce because we didn't have a bottle of anything I liked. This one has also been altered (It did ask for more vinegar. Again, that seemed too much and I'm glad I reduced the amount of that and the mustard. The end results were good) 

BBQ Pulled Pork - slow cooker style

Ingredients: 3-6 pork chops (bone in or out, you can remove the bone later)

Rub:

• 3 tablespoons paprika
• 1 tablespoon garlic powder
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar 
• 1 tablespoon dry mustard (or I used just some dijon mustard spread onto the chops)
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 1 tablespoons coarse salt

Sauce:

• 1 cup cider vinegar
• 1/2 cup yellow or brown mustard
• 1 cup ketchup
• 1/3 cup packed brown sugar
• 4 garlic cloves, smashed
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne (this was not enough to make it spicy, add more if you like)
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 
• dash of Worcestershire (not needed but I love it)

Directions:

1. Dry rub the chops on both sides
2. Put a layer of sliced onion
3. Layer 3 chops
4. Add the rest of the onion
5. Add BBQ sauce
6. Cook on low a couple hours. We had 3 chops and cooked them for 6 hours which I am sure was more than enough time.

7. Put falling off the bone cooked pork into stand mixer with flat attachment and slowly "pull" Works like a charm!

8. Add sauce with onions to the blender to blend up those onions. At this step I realized I could have cooked in carrots and celery as well and just blended that all into the sauce too to give everyone more vitamins. I don't often use a blender and I am not sure what I did but as you can see I made a mess. Oops!

At first I thought the sauce was still a bit vinegary but when combined with the meat and on the bread it was really good. I think I will keep playing with it.

Yum! This was only 3 chops and more than enough for my whole little family although next time I would do 6 so that I can freeze some left overs. Very easy meal! But, I am glad DH is doing the dishes. I made some monster dishes with the slow cooker, blender, AND stand mixer :)