I know I've talked about it in numerous threads here, but I don't think I've given it a thread of its own, but this is my method for pulled pork these days.
Today, I pulled 2 whole bone-in pork butts from the fridge. Picked these up at Restaurant Depot in a 2 pack, a shade over 19 lbs, and $1.48/lb as of... I think 2 weeks ago. A darn sight cheaper than my local Wally World or other grocery stores - the last few months, I've been seeing them from $2.19 to $2.79/lb. Matter of fact, a month or so ago, I picked up 4 or 6 of them 'on sale' for $1.99/lb and that was the cheapest I'd seen them in probably a year or so, locally.
Anyways, I deboned them, then cut into chunks. I usually do something around a pound per chunk or so - in this case, I did end up with 20 pieces. Maybe 21.
I put them in a large tub and coated the facing surfaces with a moderate later of MSG, then a fairly heavy layer of kosher salt. Flipped them all over and did the other side, then rolled them all around and got all surfaces well covered. At this point, I coated the top surface again with a heavy layer of MMD+ (my personal amped-up version of Meathead's Memphis Dust), flipped the pieces again and threw down another heavy layer of MMD+. At this point, I rolled and flipped them all around, to get every surface well coated with rub, and used pieces to 'mop up' any rub in the tub that hadn't stuck and had accumulated on the bottom.
Went out and fired up the offset smoker. My usual method (which I did today) was a full chimney of full lit charcoal (Cowboy from WalMart this time) dumped in the firebox, then placed 3 medium pecan logs on it - 2 lengthwise like railroad tracks, one across the top of those two. Then left it for 20 minutes or so to stabilize temps.
Placed all my chunks evenly on the bottom rack, leaving the first 1/4 or so open, removing the top rack for unimpeded airflow. Usually I will run it like this for a couple of hours about 275ºF , checking and turning and rotating them every hour or two, to make sure to get some nice bark formation on all sides. I leave these smoking until they pass through the stall. Now... the stall on large cuts of meat can last for hours, as we all well know. This allows good bark formation while it 'sweats out' a lot of moisture. Some folks like to wrap in foil or butcher paper to power through the stall (the 'Texas crutch'), or wait until the stall finishes to really get good bark formation before wrapping, and some people like to leave it completely uncovered and unwrapped the entire cook. Now, this DOES lead to some serious bark formation, and it usually looks like a complete meteorite when done, like this:
Now, there's nothing wrong with this, and that is some spectacular bark, to be sure. But, a full cook of an unwrapped pork butt, even running 275-300ºF the whole way will usually run me 10-11 hours or so. That's just... a lot. In the pic above, I placed in a pan after the stall and covered - STILL had excellent back, as you can see, but shaved probably a good 2-3 hours off the cook. But that's probably a good 6-8 hours of open cooking to get whole pork butts up past the stall.
With my new "chunks" method, I put them in a pan like that and cover them to finish. But you have to be very specific about when you pan and cover them. If you do it too early, while those smaller chunks are early in the stall, you're going to end up with 2-3" of liquid in the pan. That liquid is just too much. If you remove some of it, you're losing flavor - salt, rub, fat, etc. If you wait TOO long to pan them up, your chunks end up dry and the end result suffers. Now I've gotten pretty good at it (I almost said 'perfected', but tempting fate is not a good idea) and I have learned to pan them up just as most are coming OUT of the stall. Essentially I use my instant read thermometer to temp 6 or 8 chunks in various places in the cook chamber, and I do so when they're in a range of about 167-175º internal. Obviously, your chunks are unevenly shaped and have varying sizes, and you have various areas of the cooker that cook at different rates due to temps, airflow/convection, etc. Here is how they look when cooking:
When putting in the pan, they'll look something like this:
^^^^Several of those are a little larger than the ones I did today. Couple are prolly more like 1.5 lbs or so. The larger they are, the longer it will take them to get to temp and pull out of the stall, of course.
Now, for today's cook, it was almost exactly 3 hours on the nose from when I put them on the smoker until they were all pulling out of the stall and ready to pan. I have learned, to bring the pan out to the cooker with the foil already pulled off and folded into a double layer, which I lay under the pan (to keep the damned wind from blowing it away) and to pan them up, Tetris them all into place in the pan quickly and cover them and get them back on the smoker. If you pull them off and take them inside, the smaller chunks WILL lose their cooking 'momentum' and will cost you a bit of time... sometimes an hour or two. Those smaller chunks will cook off quickly. So don't dally. I can JUST fit two large butts into a single, full-size BBQ pan and cover them TIGHTLY with the foil. You want to keep all that moisture IN from this point. Then, back on the pit they go.... and yes, you could move them inside to an oven at this point if you don't want to run the smoker anymore. Meh, for me, I'm just as happy running the pit.
I've done this enough times now, I can gauge it by how tightly they're packed, how hot my pit is running (I bumped temps up over 300ºF at this point, sometimes up to 350ºF) and how the cook is going to know when to check them. I just use the probe on my instant read and poke holes through the foil layer(s) and get temps. Don't open the foil, you'll let out a lot of heat and steam and set yourself back some. It's not the end of the world, but I just temp through the foil.
At this point, 1 hour after wrapping/panning the chunks, I checked temps in 3 places - the center I got 205º and 2 places near the ends I got 210ºF. This is plenty good. Sometimes I'll take it up to the whole thing being 208-212ºF and it is a tiny bit easier to shred later, but generally you want everything over 205ºF. Or... well, I do anyways.
Back inside, cover with a towel and let rest. For however long. An hour, 2, 4 hours. Whatever. Even 4 hours later on the counter, it's still quite warm when shredding.
When you open the foil, it'll look like this:
*Note* - there's about ¼" to ½" of liquid in the bottom of the pan. If you've got a full inch of liquid, it's likely you put them in the pan too early, before they were pulling out of the stall, and your pulled pork might end up being too 'wet'. If you have barely any in the pan, you waited too long, and it's likely to end up too dry. This is what I've found has been the perfect timing - around temp 167-175ºF spread on most chunks.
After resting an hour or two, you can easily shred by hand with nitrile gloves over cotton. If you feel like you need a little bit of liquid, at this stage, I would add maybe ¼ or possibly ½ cup of white grape juice (for 2 butts). I used orange, peach, apple, various types, but I've found white grape gives some moisture and just a hint of sweetness without being overpoweringly sweet. I think apple is too sweet and noticeable - I found white grape to be very 'neutral', if that makes sense. I don't want to notice any realy fruit flavor, I just want a hint of freshness and sweetness - if I add any at all. Most times these days, since I've gotten better at knowing when to pan them up, I don't usually need any juice.
I can add a picture later once I pull the foil, but today's timeline - 1130AM, placed chunks on smoker, 230PM, placed chunks in pan, 330PM, first and only temp since covering, pulled off and placed on counter to rest.
Seriously - 4 hours, start to finish for 2 whole pork butts, 19 lbs pre-cook weight. I'll end up with about 11-12 lbs of pork out of this. I usually bag it up into 1-2 lb bags with the vac sealer and then freeze them. I always try to keep 6-10 lbs available for weeknight dinners, send some back to college with the kids or hand out to friends or take to work potlucks, etc.
There is a little bit of a sacrifice of that 'meteorite' bark with this method, but you still DO get plenty of nice, dark bark and actually get more rub, salt and overall bark and flavor with this method, I've found, due to the increased surface area. Not to mention finishing 2 whole pork butts like today in 1/2 to 1/3 the time it would have taken otherwise. Literally 4 hours from putting on the smoker to pulling off the smoker, completely done. This is how I've done them almost exclusively for 2-3 years now, and every time when I'm shredding them and take a bite over to my wife to taste, she says, "Damn, babe!" It's like every time it's the best pulled pork I've ever done.
Anyways, I decided to give this one a dedicated thread of its own, since I've laid it out a couple times in other threads, but haven't ever put it here by itself, so it can be searchable and linkable. Hope ya'll give this a try, and I hope you have as much success with it as I have! Most everyone who has my pulled pork these days seems to be blown away and say it's the best pulled pork they've ever eaten - I can't even count how many people have told me that. So... for what it's worth, I'm sticking with it. A quick, easy and satisfying cook!
Today, I pulled 2 whole bone-in pork butts from the fridge. Picked these up at Restaurant Depot in a 2 pack, a shade over 19 lbs, and $1.48/lb as of... I think 2 weeks ago. A darn sight cheaper than my local Wally World or other grocery stores - the last few months, I've been seeing them from $2.19 to $2.79/lb. Matter of fact, a month or so ago, I picked up 4 or 6 of them 'on sale' for $1.99/lb and that was the cheapest I'd seen them in probably a year or so, locally.
Anyways, I deboned them, then cut into chunks. I usually do something around a pound per chunk or so - in this case, I did end up with 20 pieces. Maybe 21.
I put them in a large tub and coated the facing surfaces with a moderate later of MSG, then a fairly heavy layer of kosher salt. Flipped them all over and did the other side, then rolled them all around and got all surfaces well covered. At this point, I coated the top surface again with a heavy layer of MMD+ (my personal amped-up version of Meathead's Memphis Dust), flipped the pieces again and threw down another heavy layer of MMD+. At this point, I rolled and flipped them all around, to get every surface well coated with rub, and used pieces to 'mop up' any rub in the tub that hadn't stuck and had accumulated on the bottom.
Went out and fired up the offset smoker. My usual method (which I did today) was a full chimney of full lit charcoal (Cowboy from WalMart this time) dumped in the firebox, then placed 3 medium pecan logs on it - 2 lengthwise like railroad tracks, one across the top of those two. Then left it for 20 minutes or so to stabilize temps.
Placed all my chunks evenly on the bottom rack, leaving the first 1/4 or so open, removing the top rack for unimpeded airflow. Usually I will run it like this for a couple of hours about 275ºF , checking and turning and rotating them every hour or two, to make sure to get some nice bark formation on all sides. I leave these smoking until they pass through the stall. Now... the stall on large cuts of meat can last for hours, as we all well know. This allows good bark formation while it 'sweats out' a lot of moisture. Some folks like to wrap in foil or butcher paper to power through the stall (the 'Texas crutch'), or wait until the stall finishes to really get good bark formation before wrapping, and some people like to leave it completely uncovered and unwrapped the entire cook. Now, this DOES lead to some serious bark formation, and it usually looks like a complete meteorite when done, like this:
Now, there's nothing wrong with this, and that is some spectacular bark, to be sure. But, a full cook of an unwrapped pork butt, even running 275-300ºF the whole way will usually run me 10-11 hours or so. That's just... a lot. In the pic above, I placed in a pan after the stall and covered - STILL had excellent back, as you can see, but shaved probably a good 2-3 hours off the cook. But that's probably a good 6-8 hours of open cooking to get whole pork butts up past the stall.
With my new "chunks" method, I put them in a pan like that and cover them to finish. But you have to be very specific about when you pan and cover them. If you do it too early, while those smaller chunks are early in the stall, you're going to end up with 2-3" of liquid in the pan. That liquid is just too much. If you remove some of it, you're losing flavor - salt, rub, fat, etc. If you wait TOO long to pan them up, your chunks end up dry and the end result suffers. Now I've gotten pretty good at it (I almost said 'perfected', but tempting fate is not a good idea) and I have learned to pan them up just as most are coming OUT of the stall. Essentially I use my instant read thermometer to temp 6 or 8 chunks in various places in the cook chamber, and I do so when they're in a range of about 167-175º internal. Obviously, your chunks are unevenly shaped and have varying sizes, and you have various areas of the cooker that cook at different rates due to temps, airflow/convection, etc. Here is how they look when cooking:
When putting in the pan, they'll look something like this:
^^^^Several of those are a little larger than the ones I did today. Couple are prolly more like 1.5 lbs or so. The larger they are, the longer it will take them to get to temp and pull out of the stall, of course.
Now, for today's cook, it was almost exactly 3 hours on the nose from when I put them on the smoker until they were all pulling out of the stall and ready to pan. I have learned, to bring the pan out to the cooker with the foil already pulled off and folded into a double layer, which I lay under the pan (to keep the damned wind from blowing it away) and to pan them up, Tetris them all into place in the pan quickly and cover them and get them back on the smoker. If you pull them off and take them inside, the smaller chunks WILL lose their cooking 'momentum' and will cost you a bit of time... sometimes an hour or two. Those smaller chunks will cook off quickly. So don't dally. I can JUST fit two large butts into a single, full-size BBQ pan and cover them TIGHTLY with the foil. You want to keep all that moisture IN from this point. Then, back on the pit they go.... and yes, you could move them inside to an oven at this point if you don't want to run the smoker anymore. Meh, for me, I'm just as happy running the pit.
I've done this enough times now, I can gauge it by how tightly they're packed, how hot my pit is running (I bumped temps up over 300ºF at this point, sometimes up to 350ºF) and how the cook is going to know when to check them. I just use the probe on my instant read and poke holes through the foil layer(s) and get temps. Don't open the foil, you'll let out a lot of heat and steam and set yourself back some. It's not the end of the world, but I just temp through the foil.
At this point, 1 hour after wrapping/panning the chunks, I checked temps in 3 places - the center I got 205º and 2 places near the ends I got 210ºF. This is plenty good. Sometimes I'll take it up to the whole thing being 208-212ºF and it is a tiny bit easier to shred later, but generally you want everything over 205ºF. Or... well, I do anyways.
Back inside, cover with a towel and let rest. For however long. An hour, 2, 4 hours. Whatever. Even 4 hours later on the counter, it's still quite warm when shredding.
When you open the foil, it'll look like this:
*Note* - there's about ¼" to ½" of liquid in the bottom of the pan. If you've got a full inch of liquid, it's likely you put them in the pan too early, before they were pulling out of the stall, and your pulled pork might end up being too 'wet'. If you have barely any in the pan, you waited too long, and it's likely to end up too dry. This is what I've found has been the perfect timing - around temp 167-175ºF spread on most chunks.
After resting an hour or two, you can easily shred by hand with nitrile gloves over cotton. If you feel like you need a little bit of liquid, at this stage, I would add maybe ¼ or possibly ½ cup of white grape juice (for 2 butts). I used orange, peach, apple, various types, but I've found white grape gives some moisture and just a hint of sweetness without being overpoweringly sweet. I think apple is too sweet and noticeable - I found white grape to be very 'neutral', if that makes sense. I don't want to notice any realy fruit flavor, I just want a hint of freshness and sweetness - if I add any at all. Most times these days, since I've gotten better at knowing when to pan them up, I don't usually need any juice.
I can add a picture later once I pull the foil, but today's timeline - 1130AM, placed chunks on smoker, 230PM, placed chunks in pan, 330PM, first and only temp since covering, pulled off and placed on counter to rest.
Seriously - 4 hours, start to finish for 2 whole pork butts, 19 lbs pre-cook weight. I'll end up with about 11-12 lbs of pork out of this. I usually bag it up into 1-2 lb bags with the vac sealer and then freeze them. I always try to keep 6-10 lbs available for weeknight dinners, send some back to college with the kids or hand out to friends or take to work potlucks, etc.
There is a little bit of a sacrifice of that 'meteorite' bark with this method, but you still DO get plenty of nice, dark bark and actually get more rub, salt and overall bark and flavor with this method, I've found, due to the increased surface area. Not to mention finishing 2 whole pork butts like today in 1/2 to 1/3 the time it would have taken otherwise. Literally 4 hours from putting on the smoker to pulling off the smoker, completely done. This is how I've done them almost exclusively for 2-3 years now, and every time when I'm shredding them and take a bite over to my wife to taste, she says, "Damn, babe!" It's like every time it's the best pulled pork I've ever done.
Anyways, I decided to give this one a dedicated thread of its own, since I've laid it out a couple times in other threads, but haven't ever put it here by itself, so it can be searchable and linkable. Hope ya'll give this a try, and I hope you have as much success with it as I have! Most everyone who has my pulled pork these days seems to be blown away and say it's the best pulled pork they've ever eaten - I can't even count how many people have told me that. So... for what it's worth, I'm sticking with it. A quick, easy and satisfying cook!
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