Smoked Pulled Pork Shoulder

A tender, smoky and perfectly rubbed smoked pulled pork shoulder to enjoy the summertime with your friends and family! Pair it with cornbread buns, mac and cheese, pickled cabbage and asparagus for a truly amazing and tasty cookout.

Prep:

15

minutes

Cook:

420

minutes

TOtal:

435

minutes

Ingredients

  • 1, 5-6 Pound Pork Butt or Shoulder (bone-in or out)
  • ½ - ¾ cup of BBQ rub
  • Salt to taste
  • Pepper to taste

BBQ Rub

  • 2 tablespoons paprika
  • 1 tablespoon granulated garlic
  • 1 tablespoon granulated onion
  • 1 tablespoon chili powder
  • 1 tablespoon ground coriander
  • 1 tablespoon dried thyme
  • 1 teaspoon ground mustard
  • 3 tablespoons brown sugar
  • 1 teaspoon kosher salt
  • 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
  • 1 teaspoon black pepper

Instructions

  1. The day before you plan on smoking your pork, remove it from the fridge. Take it out of the packaging and season it heavily with salt and pepper on all sides. Don’t be afraid to use a decent amount of salt because you will be letting the salt sit overnight to penetrate deeply into the pork.
  2. After seasoning with salt and pepper, liberally coat all sides of the pork with the barbeque rub so that all of the meat is coated in rub.
  3. Wrap the pork tightly in plastic wrap and let it sit in your fridge overnight.
  4. About 6 hours before you plan on smoking, take the pork out of the fridge and unwrap it. Place it on a tray, preferably with a rack, to dry in your fridge. During this step, the pork will form a sticky layer on the outside that will allow smoke to adhere to the pork at a higher rate and give you that beautiful, deep smoke color called the smoke ring.
  5. About one hour before you plan on putting the pork on the smoker, fire up your smoker. Give your smoker ample time to heat up and develop smoke.
  6. Once your smoker is about 250 F and has a decent amount of smoke rolling, put the pork in the smoker, with a drip pan on the bottom of the smoker to catch the fat. This can be used to cook with or for the bbq sauce.
  7. Smoke the pork for 3-4 hours at 250 F, checking every 30 minutes, until the pork develops a nice crust.
  8. After 3-4 hours, transfer the pork from your smoker to an adequately sized pan and continue to cook in a 275 F oven for another 2-3 hours or until the internal temperature of the pork reads 185 F.
  9. When the pork reaches 185 F, remove it from the oven and allow it to rest for at least 30 minutes before serving.
  10. To portion and serve, either slice strips off of the pork so that they are no thicker than a ½ inch thick or shred into pulled pork using two forks.

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