Barbequed Pulled Pork
Pulled pork is meaty, smoky, sweet, tangy, saucy heaven. Its that amazing combination of flavors that makes it so perfect. Every year I do a large batch of pulled pork and freeze the results in vacuum sealed bags for quick, delicious dinners or picnics.
I adore pork shoulder. This is a cut with a ton of flavor and lots of fat and connective tissue. Even better, its relatively inexpensive. It is my first choice for barbequing as well as braising and stewing (think crock pot). Don’t even think about grilling a shoulder. Save that for more expensive, tender cuts of meat. Likewise, don’t try to barbeque a pork loin- you’ll end up with a log o’ meat.
Smoking isn’t as hard as it seems. The basic barbeque technique is to cook it at low temperature with indirect heat and a lot of smoke for a long time. While this takes hours, they are hours in which you involvement is very passive. Do it on a day when you have to be home waiting on the cable guy. While its nice to have a smoker- and I do- there is no need to go out and acquire one. I only have a smoker because a family member received one as an ill-conceived Christmas gift 10 years before I decided to give it some love. The odds are that you don’t have one (if you do, you’ve probably got your own barbeque gospel to share) so the recipe I’ll share just addresses using a grill.
I barbeque as much pork as possible each time I fire up the smoker. It doesn’t take much longer to cook 15 pounds of shoulder than it does to cook five, so why waste the time and fuel if you’ve got the parking space on your grill grate? The instructions for this recipe don’t change much when you scale up. Just make sure that you don’t have your piggy directly over the coals.
Ingredients
5-6 pounds pork shoulder
1 batch North Carolina-Style Barbeque Sauce (recipe below)
Special equipment
A drip pan (preferably a disposable aluminum lasagna pan)
Wood chips soaked in water for at least one hour (mesquite, apple, hickory, cherry- take your pick)
1 bag natural charcoal (No petroleum-soaked briquettes, please.)
Instructions for Charcoal Grills
Set up the grill
- Preheat the coals.
- When they’re good and hot, separate them into two small piles along the edge of either side of the grill. You can use a freeform pan of aluminum foil formed into a half moon shape or an aluminum pie plate to keep them together, if you wish.
- Place the drip pan between the coals. Fill it half full with boiling water.
- Place the grill grate on top.
Cook the meat
- Sprinkle a handful of wood chips over both sides of the coals.
- Place the pork directly over the drip pan. If one side is fattier than the other, place the fattier side on top so the fat bastes the meat as it cooks.
- Cover the grill, keeping the vents on the grill fully open. Add a handful of coals every 45 minutes of so to prevent the coals from burning out. Add more wood chips once the fresh coals are hot.
- Cook to an internal temperature of 195-degrees, 4-6 hours.
Instructions for Gas Grills
- Your pork will not be cooking directly over the heat. Choose which burners will generate the most even heat without directly grilling the meat.
- Fire up the side (or sides, depending on how many burner zones you have) of the grill you’ll be using to high heat. Place wood chips in a smoker box (improvise with another aluminum pie plate if necessary) over the heat. When they begin to generate smoke, reduce the heat to medium low.
- Place pork on grill at a safe distance from heat source. If one side is fattier than the other, place the fattier side on top so the fat bastes the meat as it cooks.
- Cover the grill, keeping the vents on the grill fully open. Add more wood chips to the smoker box as necessary.
- Cook to an internal temperature of 195-degrees, 4-6 hours.
Finish pork
- Allow pork to cool fully before pulling apart into bite-sized pieces with fingers.
- Mix pulled pork with enough barbeque sauce to moisten meat, serving extra on side to finish to taste.
- Spoon warm pork onto hamburger buns and serve.
