Apple Cider Pork Roast (Fall-Apart Tender!)

This easy Apple Cider Pork Roast is the ultimate fall and winter comfort food. It's perfect for a cozy night in, or even entertaining, and it only needs about 20 minutes of hands-on prep work. It's the perfect one-pot meal! Butter, apple cider, fresh herbs, and aromatics create an incredibly rich and flavorful braising liquid for the pork, until it turns into something perfectly shreddable to serve over mashed potatoes or rice.

Braising and slow-cooking big pieces of meat when the weather starts to cool down is one of our favorite ways to cook! It's budget-friendly, super flavorful, and really cozy.

Everyone knows that pork and apples are a perfect match (just like these pork sausage stuffed apples!), but we had to take it to the next level and make a pork roast. The long, gentle cook time combined with acidic and flavorful apple cider breaks down the connective tissue in the pork, resulting in meat so tender you can break it apart with a spoon. 🤯

Serve this pork over a bed of these French onion mashed potatoes with those veggies that cooked right alongside it in the pot, and you'll be SUPER content! You just might want some stretchy pants. 😂

Craving more pot roast recipes? You gotta try our Dutch oven pot roast recipe, or this slow cooker sirloin tip roast, both of which are fan favorites!

🍎Ingredients

Here are the ingredients we used for this recipe. You can find more information on substitutions below.

Pork & spice blend

• Pork butt (Boston butt) or pork shoulder. Either one of these cuts will work well, as they have a lot of fat and marbling that will break down and turn into wonderful flavor as they cook. Bone-in or boneless works totally fine, though boneless tends to be easiest to find. Bone-in becomes even more tender and flavorful if you can find it.
• Brown sugar. Adds subtle sweetness and creates a caramelized crust on the pork when seared. It creates a flavorful exterior on the pork that helps seal in the pork's juices, creating amazing depth of flavor.
• Kosher Salt. We use Diamond Crystal Salt in our kitchen, and recommend using it instead of Morton's kosher salt or table salt. It's less salty, and its larger crystals distribute more evenly across the meat and give you better control over seasoning. If you're using Diamond Crystal like us, we recommend using 1 teaspoon per pound of meat!
• Dry seasonings. Smoked paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, black pepper, dried thyme, sage, and rosemary. This blend is deeply savory, herbaceous, and a little smoky, adding a complex and delicious flavor that really complements the pork and helps penetrate the meat while it cooks.

Braising liquid

• Butter. We use it to brown the pork and the vegetables. It helps emulsify the liquid, coating the pork beautifully if you want to skip making gravy altogether. It also adds a ton of rich, nutty flavor. Don't skip it, it adds so much yummy flavor! We do recommend using unsalted butter so you have more control over the final salt level.
• Garlic. Fresh cloves, smashed! These infuse a ton of flavor into the braising liquid.
• Apple cider. Fresh-pressed, like the kind you get from the cider mill, is going to be the best here! It's sweet, tart, and full of natural fruit flavor. The natural acidity helps tenderize the meat while it slowly cooks. DON'T SUBSTITUTE FOR APPLE CIDER VINEGAR! (Although this recipe does use a small amount of that as well.) We don't want too much of it, or this recipe would be far too acidic and tart!
• White wine. Adds additional acidity that tenderizes the pork and brightens the flavors. Don't worry too much about which wine you're using; just try to avoid using anything oaky, which might overpower some of the other more delicate flavors. It gives the dish a lot of subtle complexity.
• Chicken stock or broth. Makes a nice base of flavorful liquid for the pork without overpowering any of the other flavors. It really lets the apple cider, wine, and herbs shine.
• Apple cider vinegar. We do use a small amount of vinegar to cut through some of the richness in this dish, add a little tartness, and some depth to the sauce.
• Dijon. Adds subtle tanginess and helps emulsify the braising liquid into a sauce.
• Worcestershire sauce. Adds a ton of savory/umami depth and more complexity to the sauce.
• Herbs. We add fresh thyme, rosemary, and sage to reinforce those same flavors we put into the pork rub into the braising liquid. We add some with the garlic and sauté them, as well as add some in an herb bundle.
• Bay leaves. Aromatic and herbal, these add more complexity, but are optional!

Additional Ingredients

• Onions. We cook one of the onions before deglazing the pan, and it really melts into the liquid, becoming part of the sauce. We also add in more onions later on, so it really holds its shape, so you can serve it with other veggies!
• Celery & carrots. Part of the classic mirepoix mix (carrots, onion, and celery) is added to add flavor and depth to the dish. They're also delicious to serve with the roast at the end of cooking! We add them near the end of cooking to prevent them from getting mushy.
• Apples. Choose something that will hold its shape when cooking. We absolutely adore Honeycrisp apples, so that's what we used. Granny Smith apples also work really well. We add them at two stages (like the onions). We add some earlier on to really add flavor to the braising liquid, and again with additional veggies because we want them to hold their shape when serving.
• Cornstarch (not pictured!). If you like, you can use cornstarch and the pan drippings to make a luscious gravy at the end.

Visit the recipe card for the full quantities and nutritional information.