Pulled Pork

One thing I forgot to mention in my prep post for the pulled pork is that I left the pork butt in the brine for about 24 hours.

Today, I cooked it.

I fired up the WSM around 7:30 or so this morning. Since we burn wood to heat the house, I cheat. Or you could say I’m resourceful. After loading the bottom with Kingsford charcoal, I simply placed a big chunk of hot coals from our fireplace in the middle of the charcoal. I filled up the bowl with hot water and then assembled the unit. About half an hour later, it had come up to temp.

So around 8:00AM, the pork started cooking. I stuck a digital temperature probe into the butt and strung it up through the top vent in the WSM lid.

Today was hardly an ideal day for barbeque. It never got above 30 today, and even then it didn’t get that warm until the late afternoon. Thus, I had a little trouble maintaining a good temp. I was concerned it might affect the outcome.

After about 6 hours, I opened things up to take my first look at the meat. I didn’t take any pictures, but I can say it looked delicious. I felt better about the temperature issues- apparently there were none. The bark had developed beautifully. I’d come prepared with a couple of lengths of aluminum foil to wrap it up the pork with for the final cooking stage. I did so and then took a moment to top off the water in the WSM bowl. I place the meat back on the grill and closed everything up, taking time to put the temperature probe in the meat again. I took my first temp reading and it was at 140- so I had about 40 degrees to go. I wouldn’t need to open things up again until it was done cooking.

I continued to monitor the grill temp and the meat temp through the remainder of the afternoon. Finally, about 6 o’clock, the meat had come up to temp at 181. I could smell it as soon as I took it off the grill and put it onto the platter.

When I took the foil off, there was a nice layer of juices sitting on the bottom and the bone in the center of the meat pulled out without any effort. It took me about 5 minutes to pulled it apart with a couple of forks- during which time the Wife and I sampled the results liberally. The interior meat was super tender and the outer layer had a nice pink color where the smoke had penetrated. There was no need for sauce, as it had plenty of flavor between the smoke and the pieces of the bark distributed throughout.

Easily the best results I’ve attained for pulled pork.