Easy Slow Cooker Barbecue Shredded Beef Sliders

Easy Slow Cooker Barbecue Beef Sliders deliver the deliciousness of traditional barbecue without the fuss. These sliders feature tender, succulent chuck roast seasoned with a simple dry rub and slow-cooked in your favorite store-bought barbecue sauce. They are perfect for a weeknight dinner, potluck, game day, or summer holiday gathering and are certain to become a family favorite!

Jump to:

• Why You'll Love This Recipe
• Ingredients - Here's What You'll Need for the Dry Rub
• Ingredients - Here's What You'll Need for the Slow Cooker Barbecue Beef
• Cooking the Barbecue Beef - Step-by-Step
• Finishing the Barbecue Beef Sliders
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Recipe Tips and Tricks
• Other Slider Recipes
• Recipe

Why You'll Love This Recipe

• Dump-and-Go Recipe: This recipe couldn't be easier with minutes of prep work. Just season the beef with a dry rub, add the beef to the slow cooker with barbecue sauce, and let the slow cooker work its magic.

• Transform a Tough Cut of Beef into Fall-Apart Tenderness: The beauty of this recipe is that after slow cooking for hours, the tough chuck roast becomes incredibly tender and flavorful, and its shredded texture is perfect for sliders.

• Versatile: The melt-in-your-mouth shredded barbecue beef is perfect for sliders but can also be used for larger sandwiches, tacos, nachos, a topping for baked potatoes, and more.

• Make-Ahead and Freezer-Friendly: The shredded barbecue beef can be made ahead of time, covered, refrigerated, or frozen for later use. Just reheat it before piling it on your favorite slider buns

Ingredients - Here's What You'll Need for the Dry Rub

You can use your favorite dry rub in this recipe. Here's what I used. I know that it seems like a lot of ingredients, but it comes together quickly.

Ingredients - Here's What You'll Need for the Slow Cooker Barbecue Beef

Once you have your dry rub, this recipe requires only three ingredients.

• The Beef: I used a 3 ½-pound beef chuck roast. Slow cooking transforms this relatively inexpensive, tough cut of meat into flavorful, fork-tender shredded beef.

• The Dry Rub: The dry rub helps create a flavorful outer layer to the meat as it cooks. It also helps the meat retain moisture during the slow cooking process and compliments the flavor of the barbecue sauce.

• The Barbecue Sauce: I opted to use store-bought barbecue sauce. Specifically, I used Outback's Original Rib-Rack BBQ sauce. The main reason for using this sauce was that it didn't contain any liquid smoke. In fact, the label clearly states, "simple ingredients, no junk."

Cooking the Barbecue Beef - Step-by-Step

1. I started by making the dry rub. I added the dark brown sugar, paprika, dry mustard powder, onion powder, garlic powder, dried basil, dried thyme, Kosher salt, and black pepper to an 8-ounce mason jar.

2. I screwed on the jar lid and gave the jar a good shake to combine all of the dry rub ingredients. That's it for the dry rub!

3. I patted the chuck roast dry with paper towels. Then, I sprinkled the dry rub on both sides of the chuck roast and pressed it into the meat with my hand.

4. I poured the entire bottle (2 cups) of barbecue sauce into my slow cooker.

5. Then, I placed the beef with the dry rub on the barbecue sauce in the slow cooker. I covered the slow cooker and cooked the beef on low. After about four hours, I turned the beef and continued cooking it for another four hours, for a total of eight hours. The cooking time could vary depending on the cut of meat and your slow cooker.

Finishing the Barbecue Beef Sliders

The chuck roast was fall-apart tender after eight hours in the slow cooker.

I removed the cooked pieces of meat from the slow cooker and placed them on a rimmed baking sheet. Then, I shredded the meat with two forks. I made sure to separate the pieces of fat from the rest of the meat.

I transferred the shredded beef to a saucepan over medium heat and added fresh barbecue sauce. Then, I tossed the beef with the added barbecue sauce.

Once the shredded barbecue beef was warm, I piled it high on slider buns and added more barbecue sauce on the top.

I served the Slow Cooker Barbecue Beef Sliders with potato chips and easy coleslaw on the side. Potato salad is also an excellent side dish. Yum!

Frequently Asked Questions

Recipe Tips and Tricks

• The Master Taste Tester absolutely hates liquid smoke in barbecue sauce. If I had been unable to purchase barbecue sauce without liquid smoke, I would have used homemade!

• Chuck roast tends to have a lot of fat on it. Some of this fat is cooked away during the slow cooking, but some remains with the meat. When I'm shredding the cooked meat, I take care to separate the remaining fat from the meat. There's nothing that I dislike more than getting a mouthful of the fat!

• Many recipes suggest transferring the cooking liquid to a saucepan and boiling it to a desired consistency. My preference is to discard the cooking liquid and use fresh barbecue sauce. One reason is that the cooking liquid tends to have a lot of grease in it from the meat fat cooking down. Before using the liquid, the grease should be separated out, which tends to be messy. The other reason is that the dry rub, while flavoring the meat, can be somewhat overpowering in the liquid.

• I generally use my homemade slider buns, Pepperidge Farm soft white slider buns, or Brioche slider buns from Walmart with this recipe. I know that a lot of people like Hawaiin slider buns, but they tend to be too sweet for my taste.

Other Slider Recipes

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