BBQ Pulled Pork Shoulder | How to Make Perfectly Juicy Pulled Pork Every Time

hey everybody I'm chef Tom with a tbq calm and this is Boston but pulled pork shoulder today we're going to be tackling one of the most popular barbecue cuts of meat it's the Boston butt pork shoulder and we're taking it all the way to pulled pork which is fantastic and so versatile for sandwiches for pizza for tacos you can use this in all kinds of ways the first thing we're gonna do is trim this thing up then we're gonna inject it seasoned it get it on the grill to smoke and we'll finish here in about seven hours so what we're starting off with here is an eight point three pound Boston butt pork shoulder the bone is in on this guy and as you can see here there are two very distinctively different sides there's the fat cap and then the opposite side where the seam is going to be and we'll get to that in just a minute but first we're gonna get to work on the fat cap I'm gonna be removing the entire fat cap today to cook this pork but now it's not necessary to remove the entire fat cap but when you do you expose far more red meat which you can get the seasoning to stick to a lot better than you can the fat on the outside another thing it does for us is it gives us more surface area for the smoke to penetrate now this fat is great it'll render down it'll soften up a bit while it cooks but in the end underneath what you're gonna have is just some gray unseasoned meat so we're going to take that off not worried about there not being enough fat because there's tons of intramuscular fat that runs all the way through this giant roast of pork now don't throw away this these scraps here because these are great for making sausages adding extra fat to other grinds I'm not going to spend too much time here that's pretty good we've got the majority of that fat cap taken off of there next we're going to explore the other side and make sure that there's nothing left behind on the surface any hard pieces cartilage like this tiny piece right here see that bit of white right there or if we move over here that hard bit of white right there we're just going to take off any little pieces like that that you don't want to chew on later all right so we're good on the surface there the next thing we're going to do it's get in between these two pieces of meat right here and clean out some of this extra cartilage there's some fat and here's just some chewy stuff that's not very pleasant once this thing is cooked all the way down so this goes pretty far down and we're actually running right alongside the bone right here we're just making very gentle cuts to kind of open this thing up until we get sorted to the bottom where it's just held together in this one piece of bone and a little bit of flesh right here and then we can start to take off some of this excess stuff so there's nothing good about chewing on this stuff there's no good eating there there's no problem with completely throwing away that stuff right there and this side looks pretty good so we're gonna move to the other side now so some of that shiny membrane right there we can get rid of that cut yourself a little tab you've got something to hold on to while you're slicing this away all right so all that's looking pretty good and to be honest it's below freezing out here today and my hands can't handle much more cold meat now with the pork butt trimmed up it's time to move on to our injection we're gonna do something kind of unique today we're using a product that we often use as a marinade for ribs or for pork butts or that kind of thing and we're gonna actually be diluting it not quite as far as we normally would and then injecting it into the center of the meat this way we get all that flavor pumped right into the center and we don't have to wait a long period of time for it to brine or marinade especially with big cuts like this it's hard to marinate that often what happens is the outside gets some marinade on it the inside doesn't get much of anything so we're gonna get around that by injecting it all right so the Sweetwater spiced smoked apple spice button rib bat this is like a flavor bomb that's perfect for pork now normally we would go five times water to one part of the concentrate we're gonna go two parts water to one part concentrate today now this is an apple juice based marinade it also has that salt and sugar in there that you'd expect but then there's some really cool stuff like ancho and Chipotle Chili's there's some tamarind paste which is pretty unique just a touch of cinnamon and a little bit of cumin as well really incredible flavors especially for Portland now this has some larger chunks in particulate in it that we want to strain off because we won't be able to inject those so we're just going to run this through a small strainer so the majority of what makes it through is all liquid and we can load up our injector with that now don't throw this stuff away this has got lots of flavor in it as well you could use it to rub on the outside as a wet rub or what we're gonna do today is pour off about a quarter cup the strained stuff and we'll throw that into the wrap later during the cook so set that aside all right so we're gonna load up the injector now working with that butcher BBQ pistol grip injector today my personal favorite I'm gonna start on this side where we've carved away in the middle and we're going to work this way there is a small pocket of meat right here I usually try to get just a little bit pumped into there and you'll see that pump right up will go just a little bit right in here fill that up and then we're going to come in on this thinner into this flap just create a little bit of a pocket when we get in there and then add the liquid and we're just working in a grid pattern so we're hitting it here here here every inch or two and we're gonna work our way all the way down the butt so trying to get right down there in the center of the muscle keeping in mind that we're at the thickest part of the pork butt right now don't be worried about seeing a little bit come back out all right now we can flip this over and we'll work our way back to the other side now we've already gotten kind of down in the center of here so I'm just going to add a little bit to this top layer again just kind of working in this grid pattern back and forth and you can see here we're down to about a quarter of a cup so if we go through all eight ounces of this we started with one cup of injection which is going to work out to about one ounce per pound on this eight pound pork butt just a little bit extra left so I'm going to pump that in here and there this guy is now fully injected and we've got a little bit of injection across the entire surface of the meat which is going to be great for getting our rub to stick now for the seasonings today I'm going to kind of layer it up starting with a finer seasoning on the bottom that would be the Yardbird rub from Plowboys BBQ this is just a fantastic all-around barbecue rub lebanon pork lebanon chicken as you can see we're getting all surfaces of the meat covered all right so we got some salt we've got some sugar we've got a little bit of red which is going to look really pretty especially working with our cherry wood that we're gonna be smoking with today and then we're going to come in with a little bit more coarse rub that's going to add some extra complexity and that would be the Cattlemen's grill smoky Chipotle so this is actually considered a steak rub a coffee steak rub but it's also got a good amount of sugar in it which is going to be great for getting some carmelization on the outside of here and then just the earthiness of the coffee working with the chilies and the marinade and that injection that's a fantastic combination also a nice rustic chunkier rub on the surface helps to develop a really beautiful bark alright we're going to give this a few minutes to set up kind of use up all the rub that's on the table here and here pretty quickly we'll be ready to get this on to the smoker today we're cooking on the other smokers YS 640 pellet grill running right around 250 degrees with a combination of cherry and pecan pellets alright so we're gonna go right here on the top shelf kind of in the center toward the stack as you can see I'm sort of spreading this out a little bit that's gonna help us to get some bark on the underneath side here as much surface area as we can get exposed to the smoke that's that's a good thing at this point we really don't even need to look at this thing for at least three hours all we're looking to do at this point is get some really nice color on the outside we want sort of a mahogany red brown color develop the bark and then when we get to that point we can wrap it up in foil to finish so we'll see you guys in a few hours alright I wanted to give you guys an update we're about three hours in now we're not ready to wrap but I wanted to give you guys an update so that red color is really starting to come through which is great but we need it to darken up a bit more and we want to see more pockets like this where that fat is kind of starting to leak out of the muscles so for now we're gonna let it ride maybe another hour so all right guys I've been keeping an eye on this since about the four hour mark we're now about five hours into this cook and this pork butt looks beautiful come check it out just look at the color on there that's exactly what we're looking for dark red mahogany it looks moistened all the way across the surface this isn't a perfect point for wrapping now you're gonna need two pieces of heavy-duty foil on your workspace if you've got any juices from that pan go ahead and add those back and then like I said early on in the video we saved some of that marinade to add to the wrap along with those solids that we strained off so we're gonna pour those on now and what's going to happen here is we've created this beautiful bark that's now going to be braising and all of these extra liquids including whatever comes out of the pork from here on out so that kind of lets you know what wrapping does for you is it traps all those juices inside the foil package juices that otherwise are going to run out into your grill and evaporate and when we capture those it's going to allow us to have perfectly juicy pulled pork in the end so you want to wrap this just as tight as you can and make sure you have a look around that you haven't punctured that foil anywhere because that's going to cause you to lose your juices now we're going back up onto the second shelf of the cooker I'm placing that right dead in the sensor we're gonna go up to 325 degrees now and that's simply to expedite the process I want to get there a little bit faster you could ride this thing out at 250 the whole way it's just gonna take a little longer all right we're right around 7 in between seven and seven and a half hours into this cook now got that beautiful bark on the outside we're temping around 206 on the deepest part of the muscle here and as you can see this bone just ready to slide out all right so this guy is ready to come off all right we got all the smells coming off this hot pork straight out of the smoker love that chili smell coming off of there now with a lot of our big meats you're used to doing a long rest time after the cook one of the great things about pulled pork is that I found you don't really need that long rest time because you're gonna shred it all up and toss it in the juices that it's been sitting in anyway so all of that meats going to be moistened by the juices that have come out of it and are held in that foil package so now with some Cotton's on and some nitriles on top because this is going to be real hot you can just get in here and start to squeeze that by hand and just look at how easily that's falling apart I mean I'm just giving it a shoulder massage here and it's shredding apart that easy now you still might come across some sections of this chewy stuff that hasn't quite broken all the way down and that's okay we don't need to eat that so we can set it aside get rid of it we've done a pretty good job of cleaning the shoulder though so we're not going to run into too much of that and just look at those long wonderful strands just pulling right apart and super juicy and there we have those juices from the foiled packet and this is why we rap and this is why we saved the juices because all of that goes right back into the pork you see how that's running in the bottom of the pan when we run all of this meat through those juices you'll see in just a few seconds here soaks up all of that liquid until it's not standing anymore there's no liquid down there it's all been reabsorbed back into this pork so now we've got all of this super juicy pulled pork just falling apart but we've also got these chunks of that bark from the outside because of all that surface area that we created by getting into that crevice and spreading things apart and allowing the smoke to penetrate from all angles and we know the texture we know the aroma all of that is great but we got to check out the flavor mum so juicy it's salty a little bit sweet definitely smoky and I love that chili flavor from that marinade fantastic let's build some sliders now I mentioned before that this would be great on a lot of different applications but the sliders always a great idea for a party and get a ton of these out of one pork shoulder you know we're talking about like 40 of these little guys out on one shoulder but also don't forget about the taco don't forget about the pulled pork pizza always good idea these are good enough to eat without sauce but if you're gonna go with sauce the Tar Heel Tang from Plowboys is a great pork sauce as the name implies it's tangy it's one of those red vinegar type sauces but it's got a touch of sweetness to it as well that's really nice just a great complement to the pork and then I always love to have a little bit of pickle on my pulled pork sandwich so we're going with dads spicy garlic dill today beautiful if we now tried dill pickles on your sliders before one of the best compliments I think we know the porks fantastic toasted bun super easy this is a go-to recipe it doesn't even matter if you change up the flavor profile a bit the technique remains the same this is a great way to do pulled pork start to finish thank you guys so much for watching be sure to check out 80 BB q comm for all the products featured in today's video if you enjoyed the recipe hit that subscribe button and if you have any questions or comments oh 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 80 BQ comm slash the sauce all things BBQ where BBQ legends are made

Channel: allthingsbbq

Views: 631,165

Rating: 4.9064274 out of 5

Keywords: atbbq, all things barbecue, all things bbq, the sauce, smoking, grilling, pulled pork, pork, pork butt, pork shoulder, Boston butt, yoder smokers, pellet grill, bbq, barbecue

Id: 0DoKvxJh6aM

Length: 16min 48sec (1008 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 12 2019