Pulled pork is one of my favorite American (Southern) food. The first time I tasted the pulled pork is in our HOA annual “Pig Pickin'” party, a few years back. Neighbors brought home style side dishes, salads, and dessert to the party. And the star is the most delicious smoked pulled pork. The cooks (also our neighbors) arrived early in the morning, and setup the smoker in our community park. A commercial tow-behind grill is what normally used to cook the pork. They prepare about 5-6 Boston butt the day before, covered with dry rubs. In the early morning, they set the grill to low temperature, put the “butt” on the grill, let them cook 6-8 hours. “Low and slow” is the secret to make the super flavorful, tender, and juicy pulled pork. When it’s done, the bone in the “butt” can be easily pulled out. The meat is fork tender, moist, covered by a thin layer of “bark”. The cooks then used a pair of fork to shred the meat into small pieces. The dripping from the meat is collected and boiled with a little bit vinegar, mustard, and pepper to make the sauce. You can make sandwiches with the pulled pork, or just get a plateful of the juicy, tender, smoky meat, and enjoy it with a big cup of cold sweet ice tea.

To make the best pulled pork, there are three most important things to take care. The dry rub, the temperature, and a couple of cold beers. Every cook has his/her own dry rub recipe, which makes their unique flavor. The grill temperature is mostly in the neighborhood of  220 F and 260 F, and the internal temperature of the thickest part should reach 190 F when taken out of the grill. You need a lot of patience waiting for the pork to cook. So you can just leave it alone, go mow the lawn, then sitting in your favorite lawn chair, open a cold beer or two, enjoy the easy Sunday morning.

Today, I’ll show you how I made the Chinese seasoning pulled pork, featured in our most Supper Club party. I like the traditional Southern style dry rub, but I also like the Hunan bacon (腊肉) seasoning, which is simply salt, Sichuan pepper, and the herbs of your choice. I think the low and slow smoking process is similar to making the Hunan bacon. I have been experimenting with the pulled pork seasoning, and resulted in the following recipe:

Recipe

1                  Boston Butt (medium size is easier to handle, about 6-7 lbs)

1/2 cup       sea salt

3 tsp           Sichuan pepper (depends on how much you like it, you can adjust the amount)

3 tsp          black pepper

4-5             star anise

1 tsp          cumin seed

1/2 tsp       clove

1/2 cup      brown sugar

Cooking Instruction (TL;DR. version)

Grill/Smoker 220F-260F, ~1.5 hours/lbs meat, 4 hours covered, open after till internal temperature reaches 190 F

Rest 1 hour before carving

Cooking Instruction (Full version)

Use a blender to chop and mix the salt and seasonings, I normally don’t put the brown sugar in the blender, so it won’t get sticky. You should get about 1 cup of the dry rub. Be creative, add hot chili pepper if you want it spicy, add cinnamon stick if you like the flavor. The Boston butt is such a big chunk of meat, you’d rather prepare more rub than needed, which you can always use later.

Now rub the seasoning all over the Boston butt, on both sides and both ends. Some people like to trim the fat cap, I like to keep it on the meat. The melted fat infuse with all the spices flavor, makes the meat more tasty. Because we are going to use low temperature,  cook very long time, most of the fat will drip away eventually, so I don’t worry too much. You shouldn’t either, how many time you are going to cook this in a year? 😉

Put the seasoned Boston butt in a aluminum foil pan,  loosely cover with a large piece aluminum foil. Put the pan in refrigerator overnight, or at least 3-4 hours. The longer time you seasoned it, deeper the flavor goes into the meat. Take it out of the refrigerator the next morning, you may find some water dripped in the pan. Take the meat out, wash the pan, and put a small wire rack in the pan, and put the meat back in the pan, on the rack. The rack keeps the meat from the dripping during cooking. Cover the meat with the aluminum foil, tightly seal the edges.

Now prepare the grill. I learned from youtube videos to make a “snake” of charcoal briquettes. Then you put a few hot burning briquettes on one end of the snake, let it burning slowly towards the other end. You can control the speed of charcoal burning by putting more or less briquettes along the “body” of the “snake”. Combined with controlling the opening of the vents on the grill cover, you can control the temperature at a pretty precise level. Plus, you can just leave it alone, the briquettes in the picture lasted about 4 hours. Keep checking the temperature on the thermometer, adjust the vent so the temperature stabilizes a little bit over 200 F. Now place the pan with the meat on the grill. The temperature will rise a little bit more after 30-40 minutes, keep it below 260 F. Don’t worry if the temperature went too high for a short time, the foil pan will keep the moisture inside, so the temperature and climate inside the pan has a little more tolerance than just put the meat on the grill.

Don’t frequently open the grill to check the temperature. Some people say every time you open the cover, you need add another 15-20 minutes to the cooking time. So leave it alone!!! Let the meat transform on its own. You can obviously use a remote reading thermometer to keep checking the internal temperature. When the temperature rises to 160 F, collagen inside the meat started melting, and turn into gelatin. This makes the meat tender, moist, and flavorful. This is also what happens during the making of braised pork. But if the temperature got too high, the muscle fiber shrank too much and squeeze the juice out of meat, meat became dry and hard.

Some instructions say 1.5 hours per pound at 225 F, or 1 hour per pound at 280 F. For the 6 lbs meat I was cooking, I estimated a good 6-8 hours at temperature between 220 F and 260 F. I let it run the first 4 hours without opening the cover, until the charcoal almost burn out, then I took the pan out, setup another charcoal snake in the grill, and put the pan back in there. This time, I open the aluminum foil cover and let the smoke get in touch with the meat. Use whatever wood chip you like to make the smoke on the charcoal. After 4 hours of cooking, the meat already smell really good. Fat started dripping into the pan, and the seasoning is going inside the meat.

I checked the temperature of the meat more often in the next two hours. The goal was to achieve a internal temperature of 190 F. Just for the peace of mind, the USDA safe cooking chart recommended 145 F internal temperature for pork. At 190 F the collagen and fat are perfectly melted, so you will have the most amazing piece of meat through out.

When it’s done, take it out of the grill and rest in the pan for another 45 minutes ~ 1 hour, covered in the aluminum foil. Now the bone can be easily pulled out, and you can start slicing the pork.

I didn’t have enough time this time, so the center of the meat is still a little chewy. You can still see some fibrous meat in the center of the cut. but the outer part of the meat is so tender and succulent. Knife slices through it like cutting butter. The fatty gelatin part just melted in my mouth.  I’m not saying the dish I presented to the party is not good. I’m saying the meat was so much better when I carved it and shared with my son :). He’s always been my best company cooking and cutting all kinds of meat on the grill. That’s why I encourage everyone to cook your own Boston butt, because it tastes the best on the chopping board, and the moment you enjoy it with your family and kids is priceless.

Happy grilling!

CH