World Famous Pulled Pork

It is time to unleash my world-famous pulled pork recipe! Detailed below, are all of the steps used when I prepare pulled pork. It is non-traditional as a crock-pot is used instead of full smoking. It would be my opinion, that just smoking the pork until it is ready to fall apart, imparts to much smoke flavor for my particular tastes.

Ingredients:

1. 2 Boston Butts available at your local meat market, roughly $20.00.
2. McCormick Pork rub
3. One beer of your choice. Try to stay away from dark beer as it may be too strong.
4. Worcestershire  sauce (to taste)
5. Spicy brown mustard (to taste)
6. Salt and Pepper (to taste)

Tools:

1. A smoker or grill that can be used as a smoker. I have the MasterBuilt 7 in 1 smoker.
2. 20 lbs. of charcoal
3. Wood, preferably, hickory.

Step one is to prepare the pork. Take the pork rub and spread liberally on the pork as pictured below. Wrap the pork in Saran wrap and place in the refrigerator overnight.

While the pork is marinating, get your smoker ready. I have never cleaned the inside of my smoker and the smell is almost intoxicating! I add 10 lbs. of charcoal to the pan and turn on the gas, light the burner and use the propane to get the coals going for around 20 minutes. If you have a smoker that does not use gas, either get a charcoal lighting stack or use a bunch of paper to get the fire going. Do not use MatchLight or lighter fluid!!!

When the coals are white, like the picture below, you are ready!

Now is when you add the wood. I soak my wood for a day prior to using it for smoking. There are varying opinions as to the effectiveness of soaking the wood in water and not soaking. It is my personal preference  to soak the wood. I wrap the wood in “heavy-duty” aluminum foil. Four pieces to start with.

The next step is to add the water pan. This is a very important step as it serves two purposes.

1. The water pan helps regulate the heat and
2. helps keep the meat moist.

And now, to add the meat!! Here are two butts and a pork roast. The pork roast will only be on the smoker for a couple of hours just to get some flavor and then, it will go on the rotisserie.

And now, everything is in and the lid goes on. The idea is to keep the temperature near 225 degrees. Some people like to let the temperature get hot by leaving the water pan out for 20 minutes, then adding the water pan and reducing the heat. I prefer to just let it smoke…slow and steady!

A quick check to make sure everything is going well!

After about six hours, it may be time to restock the charcoal and wood.

time to put everything back on, except the pork roast! 😉

After another six hours, the pork is ready to come off. I usually use 1 1/2 butts for the pulled pork and the wife and I eat the rest either in an omelet, sandwich, or…just plain with a little bit of that fancy mustard!

Day 2:

For this step, you will need a crock pot. Take the sections of butts, and you may have to cut them in half to get them to fit, and place the butts in the crock-pot. Add the liquid of your choice. Water, beer, chicken stock, whatever you wish. Experiment! You can add as many spices as you want or none. for this particular version, I added two cups of water, salt and pepper. that was it! You can add the spices listed above or any ones of your choosing. Remember one thing, spices are used to enhance the flavor, not to overtake it!

Cook on low for eight hours checking periodically to make sure there is enough liquid. If some liquid has evaporated, add more.

After eight hours, the pork should now be tender enough to pull apart with a fork. Try doing that. If the pork comes apart easily, you are done. Shut the crock-pot off and let everything sit for another hour If the pork doesn’t come apart easily, continue cooking for another 2 hours. Then do the fork test again. It may take up to 12 hours in the crock-pot. Allow for enough time.

After it has been pulled, you should have very little fat left.

Now you can place the pork back into the crock-pot and take it to wherever you are going to eat it, turn the crock-pot on low until everything is heated up, and serve with “some” barbecue sauce and enjoy! It is very hard to ruin this pork..even if you dump two bottles of barbecue sauce into the mix, it is still edible!

In case anyone was wondering what happened to that pork roast………..

I hope everyone enjoys this…I know we did!