Smokin' Butts

Here are a few quick tips on how to make your own outrageous pulled pork.

Get your smoker up to 225–250 degrees F.
Start with fresh or thawed pork butt with some nice fat marbling. The fat adds a lot of flavor and helps keep the meat juicy.

Unwrap the meat, rinse it, and cut off any bloody, nasty-looking stuff.
Cover it with yellow mustard (the kind you’d put on a hotdog). Sprinkle a generous layer of your favorite pork rub over the entire surface (edges, cracks, and all). Pat it down with your hand. Disposable gloves are handy for this.
Load the meat onto the smoker grate and close the smoker.
Add some fruit wood or your favorite smoking wood to the fire to kick up the smoke at the beginning. We smoke mostly with 100% hardwood charcoal briquettes and add a few pieces of wood at the beginning to create more smoke. The meat takes in more smoke when it’s cold than once it’s been in the heat for a while.
Maintain your smoker at 225-250 degrees F.
Spray the meat with apple juice about every hour to help keep the meat moist throughout the cook.
Cook the meat for about 1½ hours per pound or until the internal temperature of the meat reaches about 200 degrees. This can easily take 8 hours or even 12 hours depending on the size of the meat and what the weather is like, etc.
Extra tip: If the meat reaches the 170s and just hangs there for an hour or two, your butts might be ready to pull off. Sample it for tenderness and see how well it pulls apart. You want to be careful not to dry it out. Ultimately, you will need to determine when it’s done. This takes some skill, but remember, pork butts are easy to cook and hard to mess up if you keep the temperature fairly consistent.