How to Cook Pork Picnic Roast

How to cook a pork picnic roast in slow cooker, smoked, baked in the oven or Instant Pot. Slice or toss with a sauce for pulled pork sliders. A high protein flavorful cut you can roast or slow cook until it’s fork tender and melt in your mouth delicious.

How to Cook Pork Picnic Roast

If you love your Traeger the first option would be to make smoked pork roast. It does take the longest but you get a smoky flavor that you cannot get any other way, and cooking outside is sometimes pretty cool. Especially during the summer months we want to soak up as much sunshine as possible so that is our go to in those months.

Let’s be honest though, when it comes to pork anything it is all about the sauce or dry rub recipe you cover the outside with. This piece, if you are not familiar with it, is a flavorful and economical cut of meat that comes from the shoulder of the pig. Much leaner than a pork butt but basically cooks the same way, we love it pulled with sauce.

Picnic Roast in the Oven

• This can be made and sliced nicely. You first want to rub the outside with olive oil and season to your liking.
• Then you can follow directions to make a Dutch Oven picnic roast or place into a roasting pan at 450 degrees F for 30 minutes.
• After 20 minutes, remove pan and cover the pan tightly with thick aluminum foil, or two layers of it.
• Put this back into the oven on the middle rack and reduce the heat to 325 degrees F for about 1 hour hour per every 2 pounds.
• If you are roasting a picnic shoulder roast with a bone it may be much larger so use this timing accordingly.
• Check internal temperature and remove once the middle thickest portion reaches a safe 145 F.
• Then allow to rest, covered, out of the oven for 15 minutes before slicing.

If you want to shred it with a sauce you can instead follow our Mississippi pork roast directions if you’d like.

The 3rd of 4 methods you can use is a pressure cooker. This works really well when cooking pulled pork. In general I will say that you do want a fattier piece to shred it well but if this is what you are working with it does work well with a thick rich sauce in the mix like we did here.

I chose our favorite bottle of rich teriyaki sauce, an onion and our meat. Literally that was all I used to make this. Many times less is more if you ask me. Especially when it comes to making easy Crockpot recipes I really just want to throw everything in and walk away all day.

Slow Cooker Pork Picnic Roast Recipe

When it comes to cooking fresh and a frozen roast in slow cooker the timing remains the same. Hard to believe that I realize but totally true. If you had this in the freezer and forgot to defrost it you would still be able to make this without an issue. I will say that it will be more moist if you defrost it beforehand but not a big difference between the two.

Crockpot Picnic Roast Recipe

• I cut cut this piece in half so it would break down easier and shred at the end as I desired.
  • Left whole the outsides tend to cook much more, a bit too dry, while the insides take a lot longer to heat up. Just a quick tip when cooking any sort of large chunk of meat this way.
• Slice onions and roast in half.
• Put onions in bottom of pot with meat on top.
• Pour sauce over the top of everything.
• Cook on low for 8 hours or until meat pulls apart easily with 2 forks.
• Ideally I like to flip meat over halfway thru timing but isn’t necessary.
• It is done when you can use just two forks and easily pull it apart into shreds like this.
• I will do this when possible and then cover it up again for another 30 minutes or so in order for it to soak in the sauce and all the flavors.

You could easily make this spicier too with a shake of red pepper flakes or whisking in Sriracha at the beginning.

A little goes a long way though when it comes to heat I think. As time goes on it does tend to intensify more as well so be careful how much you add as you can’t go backwards and don’t want to ruin your whole meal by making it too spicy.

Instant Pot Picnic Roast

Now if yours is still solid and right out of the freezer you can use the instructions in our frozen roast Instant Pot post. Adjust the timing if yours is a lot smaller than the one we made there just slightly. Believe it or not there isn’t a huge difference if it is defrosted cook time either. 20 minutes per pound under high pressure is typically how long you’ll need.

If it is tough as a result for some reason that means it wasn’t cooked long enough actually. Pork needs a while to break down the connective tissues so as opposed to beef longer is better. Same instructions would pertain to using a Ninja Foodi pressure cooker too.

Pulled Pork Picnic Roast

You can do this same thing with other cuts of pork too. Use a bottle of your favorite sauce like we did here, bbq sauce works well too. Plop in a Boston butt or slow roast a pork shoulder recipe this same way. Low and slow is the best way to break down that connective tissue over a long cook time. This is why I do NOT recommend using high, slow is key to the perfect piece of meat.

Pair this idea with a coating of dry rub on the outside of your meat for a lot of flavor all the way around, or just sprinkle with salt and pepper for a lighter coating. Just depends on how much time you have, how much seasoning you want or if you are just going for super simple keep with what is instructed below in the recipe card.