Pulled Pork Tenderloin Recipe (Honey Garlic)
- Preparation 15 min
- Cooking 300 min
- Servings 6
- Freezing Absolutely
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🍯 An unbelievable sauce, and pork that falls apart on its own
Make it once and you’ll make it again, I promise! The pork comes out of the slow cooker so tender it shreds with a fork without any effort, and the sauce is genuinely incredible: honey, maple, soy, hoisin, garlic. Big deep flavours coating every bite. Start it in the morning, go to work, and supper is waiting when you walk in.
🐖 Pork tenderloin, and that’s on purpose
Everybody makes pulled pork with shoulder. I use tenderloin because it’s easy to find, it costs less, and it cooks faster: four to five hours instead of eight. That’s what makes this doable on a Tuesday. Tenderloin has less fat than shoulder, so the sauce does that work instead, which is why there’s so much of it. If you have shoulder on hand, use it, that works too.
🍲 Slow cooker, and I mean slow cooker
I tested it in the oven and I got it wrong: three hours at 350°F and my tenderloin turned to rock. Too hot, not long enough. This recipe is built for the slow cooker and it’s perfect there. If you don’t own one I’ve given you a way out below, but do yourself a favour and pull out the slow cooker.
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🔥 Don’t skip the skillet
It’s ten extra minutes and it’s the only thing separating this recipe from boiled pork. A slow cooker browns nothing: it cooks in moisture, so without a crust first you get no roasted flavour in the dish at all. Three to four minutes per side over medium-high heat, until it’s properly caramelized. Whatever sticks to the pan, deglaze it with a little sauce and pour it all into the cooker.
🍯 Reduce the sauce BEFORE, not during
The fifteen minutes of reduction in the saucepan aren’t decorative. A slow cooker barely evaporates anything: the lid holds it all in, and the meat releases its own juices on top of that. Pour in an unreduced sauce and you’ll have sweet soup after five hours. Reduce it by a third first and it arrives exactly right.
🕰️ Four hours or five, go by the fork
Five hours on LOW at my place. But every slow cooker runs differently and tenderloins vary in thickness. The only test that counts: push a fork in and twist. If the meat falls apart with no resistance, it’s ready. If it still holds, give it another hour, there’s no risk of overcooking in that much liquid.
🔥 If you really don’t have a slow cooker
I tried it at 350°F for 3 hours and I blew it: the tenderloin turned to rock. Too hot, too short. The right way is the opposite: 300 to 325°F for 5 to 6 hours, in a COVERED dish with all the sauce around it, never dry. This isn’t the version I tested, I’m giving you the numbers so you don’t repeat my mistake. The slow cooker is still far simpler.
🐖 Tenderloin or shoulder, both work
Tenderloin is lean, so it cooks fast and relies on the sauce to stay tender. Shoulder has more fat and more collagen, so it shreds even more easily, but it needs twice the time. Use what you have. What you want to avoid is treating a tenderloin like a shoulder and leaving it eight hours uncovered.
📅 Getting ahead
This is the make-ahead dish, and not just because it cooks itself. The night before: the whole sauce, reduced and cooled in a labelled container, garlic chopped, green onions sliced. In the morning you sear the tenderloins while the coffee brews, pour in the sauce, start the cooker and leave. When you get home the only thing left to do is shred.
🫙 It keeps and it freezes
Four to five days in the fridge in an airtight container, with its sauce. It freezes very well, and it’s even better in individual portions: pull out exactly what you need for tacos on a weeknight. Reheat gently in a skillet with a little sauce, never at a hard boil.
✅ What to serve with my honey garlic pulled pork tenderloin
Tacos are my favourite way: warm tortillas, shredded cabbage for crunch, green onions. Plain white rice works beautifully too since it drinks up the sauce, and so do noodles. A sharp, acidic salad on the side does a lot of good for something this sweet and salty. If this is your kind of thing, look at my beer-braised pulled pork, or my maple pulled pork.
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Ingrédients
- 1 cup (250 ml) honey
- ½ cup (125 ml) maple syrup
- ¾ cup (180 ml) low-sodium soy sauce
- ¾ cup (180 ml) ketchup
- 3 tbsp (45 ml) hoisin sauce
- 5 garlic cloves, finely chopped
- 1 tbsp (15 ml) Dijon mustard
- 1 tbsp (15 ml) rice vinegar
- ¼ tsp (1 ml) red pepper flakes (optional)
- ¼ cup (60 ml) olive oil, divided
- 2 pork tenderloins (about 2 lb / 1 kg total)
To garnish
- Sliced green onions
- Sesame seeds
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Preparation
- In a saucepan over medium-high heat, whisk together the honey, maple syrup, soy sauce, ketchup, hoisin, garlic, Dijon, rice vinegar and pepper flakes. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat.
- Simmer for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the sauce thickens and reduces by a third. It stays pourable, that’s normal.
- Meanwhile, heat half the olive oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Season the tenderloins with salt and pepper, then sear them 3 to 4 minutes per side, 10 to 12 minutes total. You want a deep caramelized crust all over.
- Put the tenderloins in the slow cooker without overlapping them. Pour the hot sauce over them and add the rest of the olive oil.
- Cover and cook on LOW for 4 to 5 hours, until the pork shreds easily with a fork. Five hours at my place.
- Shred the meat right in the slow cooker with two forks, then stir to coat it in the sauce.
- Serve hot, topped with green onions and sesame seeds.
Two things people underestimate. First, searing the meat before it goes in the slow cooker: a slow cooker can’t brown anything, so that crust is the only roasted flavour the dish will ever have. Second, reducing your sauce before you pour it in, because nothing evaporates under that lid. Do both and an ordinary recipe turns into a very good one. The rest is patience.
Yes, with one condition: it needs to be surrounded by liquid. Shoulder is the classic cut because it’s full of collagen that turns to gelatin over a long, slow cook. Tenderloin has almost none, so it can’t rely on that. What saves it is the sauce it sits in, which keeps it moist while it breaks down. It’s leaner and it cooks in half the time, which is exactly why I use it.
Yes, but not the way I first tried it. Three hours at 350°F turned my tenderloin to rock: too hot, too short. What works is low and long, 300 to 325°F for 5 to 6 hours, in a covered dish with all the sauce around the meat. Uncovered or hotter, it loses its moisture with nothing to replace it. The slow cooker remains simpler and more reliable.
Almost nothing, honestly. “Pulled pork” traditionally refers to slow-cooked pork shoulder, usually barbecue, pulled apart by hand or with forks. “Shredded pork” is the broader term for any pork taken apart into strands, whatever the cut or the cooking method. What I’m making here sits in between: tenderloin, slow cooker, shredded with two forks. Call it whatever you want, it tastes the same.
Very well, it’s one of the best dishes for it. Freeze it with its sauce, in individual portions rather than one block: you pull out exactly enough for two tacos on a weeknight without thawing the whole batch. It keeps four to five days refrigerated. Reheat gently in a skillet with a splash of sauce, never over high heat, or lean pork tightens up.
There’s a cup of honey and half a cup of maple syrup in here, so you’d think so. It isn’t. The soy sauce and hoisin bring a lot of salt and umami, and the whole thing lands sweet-and-savoury rather than simply sweet. That’s what gives the sauce its depth. If you want to push against it further, the red pepper flakes are optional but they do a very good job.
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