Apple Brined Pulled Pork

hey everybody i'm chef tom with atbbq.com and this is apple brine pulled pork well today we're smoking up the boston butt section of the pork shoulder for some extremely juicy pulled pork and the secret to that juice is in the brine we're gonna be taking one of our favorite brine bases the cattleman's grill butcher house brine which has great savory salty flavors as well as a little bit of sugar we're gonna mix that into some apple juice so you start to get some of the marinating properties of the acidity of the apples as well as the sweetness and the flavor it all works out really fantastic in the end so let's mix that up and get our pork butt brining so we're gonna start off with two quarts of apple juice or apple cider we're gonna add to that our butcher house brine like i said salt base a little sugar but then great like garlic and onion flavors as well and then we'll give this a good whisk to start to dissolve that salt and that on its own probably not enough to submerge an eight pound pork but so what we're gonna do here is we're gonna trim up our pork butt the way we want it throw that in there and then we're gonna top it off with a little water and ice just to keep everything chill but we want to use as little water as possible so we really get the apple flavor coming through i'm going to keep the trimming really simple today fat cap on or fat cap off it's up to you today we're going to leave it on i'm just going to trim up anything that's on the surface here and then specifically the connective tissue that we find kind of down in this crevice in between the muscles and the blade bone so we'll start to open this up just following the seam and then all of this stuff here on the surface that just kind of has a weird texture once it's cooked down we're gonna get rid of that so cut yourself a little tab and then just take that right off the surface of the muscle so that's cleaned up pretty nicely you've got some fat veins running through here but that's okay on this other side we have some of this shiny it's silver skin some of it is really thick some of it's less annoying but it's all gonna go all right so that looks pretty good anything that's left behind is right on top of the bone outside this looks pretty nice not seeing any bones or ligaments left behind so that just leaves the fat cap this i am going to score so that we can work some seasoning down in here and again you can just peel this all the way off if you want to get the seasoning down to the mussel but if you happen to enjoy that texture that mouth feel and the extra added moisture from the fat cap you can leave it on and just work some seasoning down into these crevices and then you can chop this fat cap right into the meat with that i'll give our rub something to grab on to all right so we're gonna drop this pork butt in here and that gets pretty close to submerged we need a little bit of room in there so let's add some water i'm just doing the ice because the apple juice is room temperature and i want to make sure that this is chilling we don't want it warm or growing anything and then we'll just lock this into place and we're going to throw that in the fridge i'm gonna do an hour and a half per pound on this eight pound butt so that works out to a 12 hour brine now i've got a pork butt here that's been soaking in our apple brine for 12 hours started it last night we're gonna pull that out and get it seasoned up and head over to the grill so you'll see as we get closer up here that the texture on the the surface is going to look a little bit different visually and texturally it hasn't totally cooked this but it started to transform this meat and tenderize it you can see how the color has just changed a little bit and that's fine we're expecting to see that now typically with a piece of meat this size i'm not going to rinse the brine off because i know that there's so much meat on the inside that it can handle just that extra bit of salt on the surface and since that surface is already wet that's all we're going to need for a binder for our rub now for the rub we are using the our butts are smoking honey chipotle so we're balancing out flavors here we've had this in a brine that's got both salt and sugar we also want to make sure that we have some more sugar and salt to kind of match that we're not trying to go too far in one direction super salty super sweet so choosing a rub like the honey chipotle is a great idea because it also gives you that little chipotle kick to focus your taste buds on as well and these flavors are going to work really well with that apple we're getting that apple a little bit of honey flavor so there's there's sweetness on the surface that's gonna help caramelize the pork butt as it cooks i'm gonna get down there in all of those nooks and crannies all right let's let that set up for just a few minutes make sure it looks nice and moist on the surface and then we'll head over to the grill but today we're cooking on the yoder smokers ys640s pellet grill we're running it at 250 degrees with our contest blend of cherry and pecan pellets all right so we're going to go right on top here kind of open this up help it get as much bark on it as possible and that's really the initial goal right now is we're looking to form a nice bark on the outside well our pork butt's been smoking for about five and a half hours now just holding steady at 250 the color is starting to look really great on the outside so what we're going to do at this time is take it off we're going to wrap it up in foil with some apple juice to kind of braise in and what's going to happen next is we're going to start to really break down the tough parts of the pork but while it braises in its own juices and in that apple juice and that's what's really going to give us the juiciest pulled pork you see it's not real dark right now it's just this great mahogany color and we almost just want to preserve that we don't want it to go super dark so we're ready to take this off and wrap it so it smells incredible guys i mean you're really getting all the aromas coming off of it we're going gonna add about a half cup of apple juice into the wrap now you can take that half cup of apple juice out of your two quarts that you use in your brine and you'll be good that way you don't have to buy another bottle so we got that wrapped super tight it's just going to go right back on the grill we're also going to get a probe in here so we can keep an eye on the temperature i'm just going to go for the thickest part of this half of the muscle without the bone in it showing right now we're almost at 155 pretty typical we're going to bump the temperature up to 300 degrees to finish this off well our pork belt's been on for about seven and a half hours now the internal temperature has surpassed 205 degrees and that's really the target range we're looking for when we're doing pulled pork between that 205 and 210 range so we're gonna open this thing up take a look at it and see if we're ready to pull it apart all right let's open her up see what we've got oh yeah i say that's looking pretty tender that blade bone about ready yeah it's falling apart let's grab that out of here so one of the great things i've discovered about doing pulled pork is that there's really not much resting required because we're gonna shred all of this up it really doesn't need any time for the juices to redistribute because once it's shredded up it's gonna soak up all those juices anyway so this blade bone should release pretty easy yep just coming right out that's a good sign that you're ready for pulled pork and then just very little resistance when it comes to shredding this thing up and kind of check out over here is our fat cap side so that fat's rendered down quite a bit and what's left there is just kind of shredding apart with the false cap that's in there and then underneath yeah that's pulling easy so you can check out all that juice left in the wrap that's why this is going to be such a juicy pork butt that brining allowed that to retain that juice and now we can reincorporate it into the pork and it's just packed full of flavor so just running this through the juices now we're gonna sop up all of that juiciness back into our pork all of that flavor and to take a look at that no more juice in the bottom of the pan all right back in the meat oh man that is so juicy and just packed full of flavor all the way through and that's the advantage of shredding it right you can incorporate all those flavors all the way back into all of the meat it's not just on the outside i mean this is definitely the best way to get the juiciest of pulled porks through these techniques using brining and through the wrapping technique and the flavors are always going to be big you throw this on a bun for a sandwich or just out on a platter it's going to disappear in no time and it's really pretty minimal on the effort i mean it takes some time it's definitely a time commitment but you get out of it which put into no doubt well thank you guys so much for watching be sure to check out atbbq.com for all the products featured in today's video in fact we'll throw a link into the video description for you to buy the flavor kit and even the briner bucket for this pulled pork recipe if you enjoyed the recipe hit that subscribe button and if you have any questions or comments or there's anything you'd like to see me cook let me know in the comment section down below and let's be good to one another for more recipes tips and techniques head over to atbbq.com thesauce all things barbecue where barbecue legends are made

Channel: allthingsbbq

Views: 69,376

Rating: 4.979496 out of 5

Keywords: atbbq, allthingsbbq, all things bbq, all things barbecue, bbq, barbecue, chef tom, the sauce, pulled pork, pork, apple, apple brined, brining, brined, brine, pork butt, boston butt, pork shoulder, yoder, yoder smokers, pellet, pellet grill, pellets, grill, grilling, ys640, ys640s, recipe, recipes, how to

Id: UssR2CXfb-E

Length: 11min 6sec (666 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 27 2020