Great Smoked Pork Shoulder Butt for Pulled Pork - My First Time Recipe!

Pulled Pork (before bbq sauce)

There are not many meats that I enjoy, but the pulled pork I made is great!  This was my first time smoking a pork shoulder and I'm so excited that it turned out.  It looks a bit like shredded pork, so I may need to adjust the final cooking temperature, but I'm very pleased with the texture and taste.  The picture on the left is the pan of pulled pork beofore adding barbeque sauce.  I think anytime I try something new that turns out well, I feel quite proud of myself.
I decided to let each person add barbeque sauce to their sandwhich instead of me adding it to the entire batch in case we wanted to make burritos or some other dish with the meat in a couple of days.  If it's drenched in barbeque sauce it limits our options for other seasonings for other dishes.
We used two different kinds of ciabatta bread rolls for the pulled pork sandwhiches: onion poppy and plain.  Besides the Sweet Baby Ray's barbeque sauce, we also had sliced provolone cheese, pickles and mild banana peppers for the sandwhiches.  As the side dish, I attempted baked beans.  However, the beans never softened to where they should have been after so many hours.  I'll add more water and cook them some more today.  The flavor was good - just too-hard beans to actually serve them.
Recipe / Instructions for Pulled Pork


Pork Should With a Rub

 Trim the pork shoulder as needed.
Apply your rub.  Here's what I used:

• Season-All Salt
• Cayenne
• Chipotle
• Black Pepper
• Cumin
• Thyme

Inject your pork (optional).  I must confess that I fully planned to inject this pork, but I accidently broke the device before I could.  OOPS!  I was trying to put the part that goes inside (I'll call it the handle/pusher) into the syringe and the end that I was pushing on just snapped off.  I guess that was a wee bit too much force.  Being the brainiac that I am, I thought maybe a turkey baster would work.  So I cut a few holes around the pork, sucked up my mystery juice (juice & leftover rub) and tried to "inject" it into the pork.  I don't recommend this technique.  The hole is too large and your mystery juice will ooze right back out.  At least now I know, and if you didn't already know, there you have it!


Pork Shoulder & Backed Beans

 My smoker was at 300 degrees when I placed the pork shoulder in it.  It went in at 8:15 am.  I used a chimney to light the coals, but I plan to get a small blow torch device.  Not the kind a welder uses!  I'm afraid I'm going to start a fire with that chimney.  I'd rather have a little more control when lighting the coals.  When those little pieces of lit paper start flying around my yard, I tend to get freaked out.


Smoker

 In the picture on the right, you can see the top of the smoker (barrel) there are holes and there are valves at the bottom.  Throughout the day, I open and close different holes or valves to maintain a consistent cooking temperature.  I have a thermometer in one of the top holes as well as one that sits on the rack.  The top one runs about 15 degrees cooler than the one of the rack because it's farther from the heat source.  It gives me a quick guage without having to open and close the lid.  For the more serious smokers, there are much better gauges on the market.  Inculding those with a fan system to adjust your temperature and WiFi so that you can check on it and control it from your cell phone.

4 hours of smoking

4 hours of smoking

After four hours inside the smoker, it was time to wrap the pork shoulder.  I pulled it out and place it on 3 large sheets of heavy duty aluminum foil so that it could be triple-wrapped.  It's best to have several layers of heavy duty foil if you are adding a liquid in case you have any small tears in your foil.  If it tears, all of your liquid could spill out and onto your coals at the bottom.
Before closing the foil around it, I added liquid. 

• Apple Juice - I used my juicer and juiced several large Fuji apples.
• Honey
• Cayenne Pepper
• Chili Powder
• Balsamic Vinegar
  

  Resting Pork shoulder

  

I closed the foil around the pork shoulder and liquid, then place it back in the smoker until it reached about 190 - 200 degrees.  Some areas of the pork were at 190, while other spots were near 200.  It was around 2:00 pm when it reached this temperature.  So, the total time inside the smoker was around 7 hours for this nearly 10lb pork shoulder.  I let it rest outside of the smoker for several minutes and the temperature increased to 205.


Smoked Pork Shoulder

 While wearing gloves so that I didn't burn my hands, I pulled the pork apart.  The fat and most of the outer "bark" (really dark edges) went aside and were not included in the pan of pulled pork.  Some of the bark and fat went into the pot of beans, the dog got a couple of pieces, but most went into the trash.  After smoking there was very little fat as it all rendered off.
In the picture on the left, you can see the apple juice liquid.  I mixed that with some Funny Farm BBQ sauce and honey, then added it to the pan of pulled pork.  It's not an overpowering flavor, but it's flavor that we enjoy and still leaves us options to prepare other dishes with the left-overs.
My first go at smoking a pork shoulder was a great adventure!  I'm proud of myself and happy that the kids and my husband like the taste.  I still need to work on the baked beans, but overall, it was a wonderful experience.