BBQ with Franklin: Pulled Pork

well hello there i'm Aaron and this is barbecue with franklin today we'll learn how to prep and smoke and cook and eat a pork butt that's from the shoulder we're in texas and everybody knows everybody knows everyone knows that pulled pork doesn't really make it down to texas i happen to really like pork and i happen to really like pulled pork we're gonna do kinda a texas version of a non texas meat we're going to start off with a dry rub well look here black pepper since we're in central texas we are going to go pretty heavy on the black pepper about like that it's a big piece of meat so it can take a lot of salt unlike ribs or maybe chicken or somethin salt pepper ratio is about like they do on briskets its about half and half for pork we're going to want a little bit of color so im going to add a little bit of paprika here it's not so much for flavor more just to kind of make it look neat going to get some savory action there not a whole lot gonna do some onion powder wanna be careful that your onion powder isn't too powdered it's more grainulated if it is a powder it'll kinda tend to clup up it wont really get in there quite as well as you want it to same thing with the garlic powder bout like that you know i think that's probably about it for pork i tend to use a shaker for it much like ribs looking more for presentation i want the rub to really get on there i don't want to be clumpy i don't want it to be you know just kinda like haphazardly thrown on there the brisket cooks for a really long time so you can do that 'cause the smoke and the colors going to cover it up not necessarily the case for pork because it's not gonna cook quite as long im going to use the shaker i think that's looking real nice you can see the paprika in there its got a nice red tent to it gunna look real pretty the peppers gonna look nice and the salt's gonna make it taste good that's a dry rub for a pork let's figure out what a pork butt is got a pork butt here gonna cut the thing open but before that let's talk about a pork butt where it comes from on the pig a lot of people think oh its a pork butt it's coming from the rear end alas my good friends not so pork butt is the top part of the shoulder you got the shank down here where the joints are in the right above that you've got the the pork butt its called a shoulder butt or a Boston butt if you will that might be what it's called at a grocery store i love a clean hand slice it open just any old knife will work fine if you're not buying it at a store where you can go to the butcher cabinet and just get one you're probably going to end up with two they always come in two packs set that off to the side alright so we've got our pork butt here its got fat on one side you kinda role it over got a couple different muscles we're not really going to get into that right here if we were doing competition stuff we would but we're not doing competition stuff so we're just going to cook this thing to tenderness shred it to pieces and go to town so we do have a bone in there a blade bone and that's the shoulder blade so that's the thing we're going to be paying attention to later when we're going to be cooking for pork butts I don't really trim very much its got a lot of fat it's a pretty bland meat so you really want that fat to cook down in there if it's got something kinda hanging off like that I'll slice that off otherwise i'm really not going to do anything to it but since I just happen to have a knife here I'm just lookin' to cut something I guess a lot of people could put different slathers and different things on this all i'm going to do is put a little bit of olive oil on it just to make the rub stick like I said before it's a huge piece of meat it can handle a lot of rub so wanna make as much stick on there as possible so just kinda get it goin on there this will help it get a little bit of color on there too there's not a whole lot of blood involved here looking pretty good got our trusty dry rub right here get it opened up i'm talking about being in liberal with it gotta put a lot of rub and this is kinda where the texas style comes in if you were doing a pork butt in other regions you wouldn't have nearly this much black pepper in there but since we're in texas and Texans love black pepper we're going to put a lot of pepper on there you can see the paprika in there its going to add a lot of color here in a little bit and all this rub is going to make a really nice brisket like bark really pat it in there there you go that is a very nicely rubbed pork if you wanted you could let it rest for a little bit and let the moisture kinda help soak in the rub i'm not going to mess with it we're not really in a hurry so we're going to put it on right now it's really pretty looking lets put it on so you've got a cooker up to 275 degrees that's always my kind of go to temperature it's kinda square-ish so we are just going to put it on fat side up if it looks like here in a few hours that it's not getting enough color on one side which on this particular cooker it will you could flip it over if maybe the fat's not rendering out as quickly as you want it to you can try to flip it but for now fat side up at sounds really good since we're in texas i want it to look more like a brisket than an actual traditional pork butt want it to get really black and crusty and just a really thick bark on it right before i get ready to wrap it in foil probably here in about four hours i'm going be watching this fat and it's going to get real barky and eventually it's gonna split and when it splits thats gonna let me know that it's about time to wrap it real tight in foil and fill up the water pan the water pan helps a lot with bark butt five hours in it's been maintaining at 275 let's check it out oh yeah that's cute this is not a Memphis style nor is it the carolina style pulled pork this is texas style it's got a real briskety looking bark right here kinda crunchy it's looking good i'm spritzing it with apple cider vinegar you could do apple juice hot water you get some hot sauce in there if you want i like the hot sauce thing but the point is that you keep it moist in an effort to preserve the bark so i'll use my trusty towel pick it up and it's still got a long ways to cook but i wanna wrap it in foil just to keep the smoke off of it and i don't want it to burn up and i dont want it to dry out oh look at the juice coming out that looks real nice that's perfect also look at the fat we cooked the fat side up right here the fat split and that kinda just from doing this a whole bunch gives me the idea that you know it's about ready to rap that's kinda when i lift up the lid and am looking just taking a quick peek I'm always checking to see if the fat is already split on top of here and it has and it's been split for a while five hours in we're going to wrap it up so i've got the foil layed out right here i've got it double layered on the bottom in case I scrape it on the bottom of the grate right there i don't wanna tear it cuz once this thing gets wrapped up its going to start collecting all the fat everything that's cooking out of it and i want to retain that moisture pork has a lot of fat in it and it's going to cook out of course you wanna keep that cuz that's just flavor i'm just going to spritz it im going to get it pretty wet this is the last time i'm going to see this thing before I finish and unwrap it hopefully you won't have a squeeky table put it back on shut the lid and maintain at 275 degrees about eight hours into this pork butt cook i suspect it's about done going to lift it up we're going to open up the foil pack we're going to twist the blade bone a little bit let it rest for about thirty of forty minutes somewhere around there and shred it to bits unfortunately one of the things about using foil is that you actually have to physically unwrap it to check out the meat if you're not using foil to wrap or anything you can just look at it and it's ready to go open this thing up we've been cooking fat side up old hello that looks good so we've got this thing done right now gonna kinda grab the bone you know a pork butts done when you can grab the bone and if the bone slides out or if it's letting go right there that feels just about right it's going to carry over just a little bit farther while we let it rest those pork butts been resting for about thirty five minutes now the important thing about resting meat is you want it to re absorb the moisture because if you just pull it off and it's still raging hot it's still cooking and it's still the muscles are still tightening up they're still pushing up moisture so you really gotta let it rest if you don't it'll look great when you shred it but it's going to be dry within just a few just mere seconds it's going to dry up pick this up you know it's ready to pull when you can hold it with your bare hands that is a nice lookin pork butt its very simple you're just going to shred it we're doing it in a foil pan to keep all the juices in there you can put a vinegar sauce on there if you want you can put a sweet sauce on there if you wanted the world is yours its pork you can do anything you want we really don't have any rules in texas for pulled pork other than its smokey and its good gonna kinda simply just pull it apart all that fat I like it this looks really delicious there are couple certain muscles in there that you would wanna pull out if you're doing a competition but not for sandwitches necesarilly just dig in shred it up I like to keep kinda bark in there pick up this bone right here that's a sign of a good pork butt if you can pull out the bone with great ease it's done its tender and when it looks like this and it's still moist you know you've got a winner this pan is to small got the pork butt shredded here it's looking real good we've got an even mix of bark inside meat really moist i'm really excited about this it's not every day i eat on camera that's really good i think you're on your own with this im taking this one with me

Channel: BBQwithFranklin

Views: 5,169,542

Rating: 4.8727932 out of 5

Keywords: BBQ with Franklin, austin, texas, BBQ, Barbecue (Cuisine), pulled pork, Aaron Franklin, Franklin BBQ, KLRU, PBS

Id: LbzEa_juegs

Length: 10min 27sec (627 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 01 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/simplygreg]

Franklins is easily the nest BBQ I have ever had. Great guy too.

Yay ATX!

[u/lolag0ddess]

Awesome video. I love his brisket one too.

[u/Remy1985]

No brining? That looked pretty damn tender, do I even need to brine? (I usually do a 6 hour brine)

*wow, I said brine a lot.

[u/huggybear0406]

I met him at the TX Monthly BBQ Festival this year, a really cool dude. He handed me a HUGE piece of brisket and started to laugh manically.

[u/Kardtart]

3:40...huehuehue

[u/irishtexmex]

Mmmm... Franklins. I love my city. :)

[u/_hellonasty]

Such a friendly soul. Hundreds of people lined up out the door at his restaurant and he'll have a full on conversation with you.

[u/chillsaps]

Hah. Wearing my Franklin t-shirt right now. The brisket was so worth the 2 hour wait. He's a maniac to see in person.

Edit: grammar

[u/[deleted]]

Thanks so much for posting this, /u/Pineapple_Chicken! After watching this video I decided to make it despite not having a smoker and it actually turned out really well!