My First Smoke - Pulled Pork

For those of you who this interests:

This is a pork butt, or pork picnic. It refers to the cut of meat. Basically its the top quarter of a pigs front end. That's why it's called a shoulder - get it!!?? The picnic sits right below the shoulder. This is the go to piece of meat for smoking. It's a very forgiving piece of meat. Super versatile too! Take its internal temp to 180˚ and you've got awesome sliced pork for serving. Take it to 205˚ and you've got unbelievable pork that pulls with a fork. That pulled pork is what I'm after. A required tool for all this is a good meat thermometer. I got my hands on an iGrill. I'll explain later.

You'll notice it has skin attached to it. There is a huge debate going on in the pork universe what to do with the skin when smoking meat. Personally I take it off. I think the smoke has an easier time getting to the meat with it outta here!

You should also know that this hobby of smoking is TIME CONSUMING. Plan on a pork shoulder like the one above (9lbs) to take 2.5 hrs/lb. That's almost 20 hours of smoking. For my first smoke this was daunting. I couldn't take the chance of a 20 hour smoke going bad, so I cut it in 2 pieces, and took out the shoulder blade.

Here you can see it split in two. Still quite large hunks of meat. After that, you need to season your meat. I used a store bought for this run and the end result was really good, spicy, but good.

 So after the meat hangs out in the marinade for about 24 hours. It's time to smoke. But with what you ask?? Here is another huge debate. For pork, the most common wood used is Hickory. It's a really strong wood typically needed for long smokes and imparting strong flavor. Pork butts can handle it.

To the right, you can see the butts all rubbed down. Into the smoker they go, and the next picture is a pic of the pork after about 4 hours. Every hour into the smoke after the meat hits 120˚ I spritzed the meat with a mixture of apple juice and spiced rum. This helps develop a bark.

Here it comes. The wait. In smoking meat at low temps around 250˚ there is what is called a meat stall. Here is where the temps of the meat stay constant for HOURS. You need to be patient. At this time the meat is letting off so much fluid that it is actually sweating. Sweating = cooling.

Sometimes and in the case of this butt, The temp of the butt actually dropped from 177˚ to 175˚ during the smoke. You have to grit your teeth and take it!!! DON'T MESS WITH YOUR TEMPS.

Keep hanging in there! It will be worth it. After the required time went by, I pulled the meat off the smoker. Now more waiting. Wrap that sucker in foil and let the juices go back into the meat. An hour should do. After that you'll have the juciest meat in the world, and you can pull the pork now.

Here is the good part. Now you get to try your creation of love, sweat and tears. In the picture it may look a little burnt, but trust me, this is all the good stuff. They call it Bark.

 If you can't stand the wait of the meat stall and foil your butt to push it through those temps, the bark gets a little softer. I didn't foil my butt in the smoker and you can tell, I got awesome results.

This was after the meat sitting for about an hour. Next you get to see the score. Meat 0, me 1.

The red line you see in the meat is called the smoke ring. A true smoke ring can only be made by smoking meat. So that meat you get in BBQ shops that says slow smoked ribs, check for the ring.

If it's there you know you are getting a quality slow smoked product. If not, you're getting suckered. 

Look how juicy and moist the meat is. The results speak for themselves.

I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. I know I had a blast eating the results!!

Let's continue on this journey of mine, and let's learn together! I will hope to teach you tricks and tips along the way. Next up.... RIBS!! Stay tuned!

 Feel free to check out this smoker, it's a really nice product capable of awesome smokes.