One of my favorite things to prepare on my Traeger grill is slow smoked, pulled pork. This is a great dish to prepare you just have to be patient waiting for the tasty outcome. The nice thing about pulled pork is that although it takes a long time to prepare it’s usually a large piece of meat that’s great for large gatherings or for families where any leftovers can be packaged and frozen and served at a later date.
To start you have to select a nice piece of meat. Go to your favorite butcher and ask for a pork butt or pork shoulder and since you’re gonna be cooking it for between 10 and 15 hours you might as well get a large one because it takes the same amount of energy to cook as a small one. I prefer a bone in piece of meat rather than boneless. I find that as it cooks the bone provides flavor and tenderness to the completed product.
The slow and patient processed start with the preparation.
Preparation:
1. Unwrap your piece of meat, I like to wash it thoroughly before seasoning it.
2. After it’s been washed pat it dry with several paper towels.
3. Usually one side of the cut of meat will have a fat cap on it I will trim off any excess fat but try to leave a layer that’s about an eighth of an inch thick. As the pork cooks that fat cap will dissolve into your pulled pork keeping it most.
4. The next step is to liberally coat your cut of meat on all sides with your favorite dry rub. I prefer to use Kinder’s Brown Sugar Mild Barbecue dry rub. It’s available online at kinder’s.com or likely through Costco, Walmart, or any other large major retailer.
5. Once you’ve liberally coated it with the dry rub wrap it tightly in some plastic wrap, place it on a plate and leave it overnight in the refrigerator. If you’ve got the time it doesn’t hurt to let those herbs and spices soak into your meat for two days.
6. Once you’ve had it in the refrigerator for a couple days or at least 24 hours pull it out of the fridge and carefully unwrap it from the saran wrap. Some of the dry rub will have dissolved and soaked into the meat and it never hurts to add a little bit more dry rub to the pork shoulder. It’s a large piece of meat and needs a liberal amount of spice.
Cooking:
It’s now time to get the cooking started.
1. Turn your Traeger or other smoker on to the “smoke” setting and let it come up to temperature with the lid open. Once it’s smoking liberally turn the heat up to high to get the chamber warm and once the temperature gets over 350° turn it down back down to the smoke setting.
2. Place your pork shoulder in a cooking pan, I recommend a disposable one, with the fat at the top. With your smoker now back down to smoke temperature, usually between 185°and 205° You can set your pan with the pork shoulder in it onto your grill.
3. This is where the patience comes into play. I will usually let my pork shoulder smoke for between five and eight hours. Often I will put it on at 9 o’clock in the evening and then check on it first thing in the morning. If you like a deep rich smoky flavor then you can tend towards the eight hour timeframe but never less than five hours.
4. Once we’ve had it smoking for the right amount of time it’s time to add some liquid to the baking pan. There are a lot of options here some people like to use a mixture of apple cider vinegar diluted with a little bit of water and brown sugar, some like to use apple juice but my preference is to add about 6 to 8 ounces of beer, preferably a nice hoppy IPA. Then seal the pan tightly with two layers of aluminum foil. At this point it’s best to place a cooking thermometer deep into the meat reaching to the center of the cut with the thermometer protruding through the aluminum foil so that you can constantly monitor the cooking temperature.
5. The thing to remember about a great pulled pork is that you’re not cooking it for a certain amount of time you’re cooking it to reach a certain temperature. by my experience, the best target temperature is no less than 205° but no more than 211°. The time it takes to get there can vary depending upon your piece of meat. Sometimes it takes just an hour or two and other tones it may take 5 hours. It’s not uncommon for the meat to rise steadily reaching a temperature of 195° and then to seemingly get stuck. This is called hitting the “wall”. Sometimes you can be up against the wall for several hours other times it’ll get through the wall in as little as 20 minutes. The main point here is to carefully watch the temperature once it hits that 195° mark waiting for it to get to 205°.
6. Once you reach your desired temperature take your pulled pork out of the grill set it aside Leaving it covered and let it sit for and rest for at 20 to 30 minutes.
7. After you’ve let it stand for 20 to 30 minutes now carefully peel back the aluminum foil. Be careful not to let some of the escaping steam touch your skin or face as it can scald.
8. At this point you can begin shredding your pulled pork. I have a pair of shredders called bear claws which are two large steel claws that you can use to tear the park apart. if you don’t have bear claws you can use 2 large serving forks. I will do my shredding in the same pan that I cooked it in so that I can saturate the pulled pork meat in the juices that have collected In the cooking pan. At this point it doesn’t hurt to take a little taste see how it is for seasoning. Because it’s a large piece of meat it may not hurt to add a little bit of your dry rub to your pulled and shredded meat, just be careful not to over season it and make it too salty.
Once it’s been shredded you can transfer the meat to another dish render the drippings to remove the fat. you can make a great BBQ sauce or gravy or simply pour it over your shredded pork.
At this point it’s ready to serve. It goes great with potato salad and coleslaw. Liberally stacking that pulled pork onto a nice healthy sweet roll and adding some of your favorite barbecue sauce is a great way to enjoy the fruits of your labor.
There are lot of different ways to prepare pulled pork but this one is mine. Some people like to mop it while it’s cooking with their liquid of choice or barbecue sauce. I find my method makes it very easy to cook and I haven’t been disappointed with the results.
Give this recipe a try and let me know what you think. If you tweak it and like the results shoot me a note and I’ll give it a try.