September 13, 2008
Pulled Pork Sandwiches
Homemade Smoked Pork Shoulder
Costco sells boneless pork shoulder for a pretty good price. I would love it if they sold bone in pork shoulder but they don't, so this recipe has a 6-7 pound boneless shoulder. This cut is also referred to as a Boston Butt.
The night before you smoke your pork shoulder, you'll need to apply a dry rub. I used a dry rub from Steve Raichlen's cookbook, slightly modified below:
Dry Rub
1/4 cup of brown sugar
1/3 cup of paprika
3 tablespoons black pepper
3 tablespoons kosher salt
2 teaspoons garlic powder
2 teaspoons onion powder
2 teaspoons celery salt
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
This guy has a lot of great recipes. I strongly recommend this book. And the pictures within the book are outstanding!
After your dry rub is on the pork shoulder, place it in the fridge overnight. Put your wood chips in a bucket full of water.
The next morning (I usually start around 6:30AM) get your coals ready for a 250 degree heat. As soon as your coals have ashed over, add a few wood chips and place the pork on the grill over indirect heat. The picture below shows the indirect heat placement. Also be sure to place some aluminum foil under the shoulder or you'll have a mess to clean up.
The first picture above shows a mop solution. Once every hour (about the same time you add your coals and wood chips) you'll need to mop the pork shoulder. The mop consists of:
2 cups of white vinegar
1 Tablespoon of kosher salt
1 teaspoon of black pepper
1 teaspoon of red pepper flakes
1 onion cut into circles
A few circles of jalapeno peppers from one of those jars of peppers.
The mop is also from the How to Grill cookbook shown above.
Once the internal temperature of the pork is in the range of 185-200 degrees you can take it off the grill. This should take at least 12 hours. It is believed that once the pork shoulder gets to this temperature the connective tissue basically melts along with the fats and really makes the pork nice and moist. Once the shoulder is off the grill, I wrap it in foil and let it rest for about 20 minutes.
After the rest, I grab two forks and start pulling!
The pork shoulder smells so good that the dogs couldn't wait for a sample!
For a barbecue sauce, I used a simple North Carolina based sauce straight from the How to Grill Cookbook. The sauce consists of:
2 cups cider vinegar
3 tablespoons ketchup
2 tablespoons brown sugar
4 teaspoons of kosher salt
1 Tablespoon of Franks Hot Sauce
2 teaspoons of red pepper flakes (I like it hot)
1 teaspoon black pepper
To finish it off, I top my sandwich with some cole slaw. Now that's authentic BBQ!
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