Carolina Style Pulled pork
I like cooking bone in Boston Butts, I feel they are more forgiving for my cook style. But I just could not pass up the sale on the boneless today. For today’s cook the flavor profile I am looking for is an Eastern Carolina tangy vinegar flavor throughout. You can accomplish this by simply using a vinegar based sauce on smoked pork, but I am wanting that flavor through and through before any sauce is applied. I am going to attempt this through injecting the meat and using a spritz/mop with the ingredients you see below. I have made my own rub and sauces before to varying degrees of success. What I have found is that it’s that “How” you BBQ is more important than “What” you use to BBQ, i.e. whose sauce, rub, grill, wood that you use in the process. So if you see specific product brands in my pics, its cause I am using these pics in my own FB as well and not to promote those brands here. It’s my firm belief that BBQ is an art form and NOT a science.
The Inspection – After unwrapping and untying it, I checked out the trim on it. The fat cap on the back looked good, with only minor clean up. Topside had some silver skin and random fatty pieces I trimmed off, especially around the “money muscle”.
The Injection – Traditionally I don’t use an injection with a whole bone in Boston Butt when cooking for friends and family. However when cooking for competition or a boneless pork butt, the meat is trimmed pretty lean and I want to avoid drying it out. Additionally for competition, I am trying to get as much flavor as possible into every bite, so injection is a nice way to put flavor right into the meat as it cooks. I started injecting at the “money muscle” and spaced about half inch grid pattern, injected the butt. I inject directly into the meat or through the fatty layer into the meat
The Rub – First I apply Killer Hogs “The BBQ Rub” to all sides. Including the fat cap. This is my first line of flavor. It is nicely grained so that the rub “melts” into/onto the meat. Since this was a boneless butt, the muscle sections are separated via the deboning process and I rub this in the interior as well.
I fold it back up and finish applying the first rub layer. I then follow up with what folks would call a finishing rub. It is coarser grained rub and helps provide a nice bark to the outside. For this I am using my good buddy Bob’s Classic No. 9 Rub. You can really see the difference. If I have time, I will let this set for hours. But atleast as long as it takes to get the smoker up to temp
The Cook – Next I fire up my Pellet Grill.. Yeah I know the Grill is not all shiney and new. It gets A LOT of use and it is clean where it needs to be. Temp is 225 for today for a couple of reasons. First low and slow is better for how I like to cook. Second, it’s a boneless butt so its not a SOLID piece of meat. The heat will travel fast through it. And finally, it came to about 5lbs dressed out. That’s roughly 5 hours cooking time. It will be done in plenty of time for a late afternoon feast.
The plan is to smoke for about an hour to let the bark start to set so that when I start mopping, I don’t mop it all away
I keep mopping every 30 minutes for the first 4 hours
It gets wrapped after 4hours of smoking. I found it doesn’t get anymore smoke after that point. For this cook I used Butcher Paper instead of foil. Bark seemed to be a bit better
Didn’t get pictures of unwrapping. Was cooking solo and didn’t have a camera person. Unwrapping can be a messy process with all the juices and didn’t want to make a mess of my phone
