Pulled Pork

One of the great things about having a backyard Smoker is I can do so many more things than if I was just using the propane grill. Besides smoking I can direct grill and I can offset grill or do a combination of both but for this post we will stick with smoking and we will visit direct grilling and offset grilling in a future post.

One of the most popular items to smoke, if not THE most popular, is PORK BUTT and no this does not refer to the South bound part of a North bound pig (that would refer to its bum folks) but it actually refers to the shoulder oh and— don’t ask me why it’s called the Butt because I simply don’t have any idea. What I can tell you however is that when it is done right it makes one of the tastiest meals you could wish for.

Now in the BBQ/Smoker community there are three camps  when it comes to doing a pork butt:

Camp one:  Do it LOW. All sides agree on this point and the low is no more than 250 degrees otherwise the pork will get ruined.

Camp two: Bone in versus no bone. While I have never tried doing it with the bone in I can attest to the fact that “bone in equals added flavor” and one day when I find a bone in pork butt I will try it that way.

Camp three: This particular camp is the most contentious as it deals with “time” because after all the mantra for the smoker community is “Low and Slow” and when I first started smoking meat, especially pork butt, I was dead fast that the longer the better and so I would monitor the smoker for 14 hours to make sure the butt turned out just right. Now I didn’t mind but my wife was ready to shoot me so I set out to find a faster way to do it and guess what? I found it!!!!

The Ontario Pork Producers Marketing Board (the place I am proud to say my DAD worked at for 40 years) has their saying “Put Pork on your Fork” and now I am happy to say so do I—- “INJECT YOUR PORK AND SAVE TIME”. That’s right you did read that correctly I did say” inject your pork”. By doing this you can smoke a 6 pound pork butt in just 5 hours and get the same results if you smoked it for 14 without injecting . Here’s how.

Ingredients:

–          One 6 pound Pork Butt

–          4 Tablespoons Kosher/Sea salt

–          2 Tablespoons Granulated Garlic

–          2 Tablespoons Granulated Onion

–          2 Tablespoons Ground coriander

–          2 Tablespoons ground Cumin

–          2 ½ Tablespoons ground Pepper

–          ½ cup Brown sugar – separated in to two batches

–          ¼ cup Apple juice

–          ¼ Apple Cider vinegar

–          Wet apple wood chunks (the amount will vary on how much smoke flavor you want). We use wet so that the wood smoulders and gives off more smoke in the smoker chamber.

Method:

–          Mix all dry ingredients in a non- reactive bowl.

–          Mix the wet ingredients in a measuring cup

–          Add half the dry ingredients to the wet and mix well

–          Using a Meat Injector, inject the wet mixture into the pork making sure to hit as many places as possible.

–          Liberally rub the remaining dry ingredients on the pork and let sit for approximately 20 minutes

Put the pork in the smoker and monitor the temperature for the next 5 hours adding wood chips as you like(charcoal as needed).

Let cool slightly and then shred, add your favorite BBQ sauce, sides and enjoy!!!

And there you have it……. a simple but tastey recipe for the grill

 

Bon Appetit