Sweet and Spicy Smoked Pulled Pork

Ingredients

1 6-8 lb pork butt - don't get the picnic or some other cut you want the butt

1 cup Fab P pork enhancer - basically pork bouillon

2 cups fruit juice - for this I used apple

1/4-1/2 cup honey - for drizzling

plenty of your favorite rub - I make my own but you can use any rub you like - at least 1/4 cup

Preparation

After you unpack your meat you are going to wash it. I go to Kollner's butcher in Rockville Centre and pick up the pork butt. It's still packaged so I just want to wash off any of the juices which have been sitting on the outside of the meat. No need to go crazy here, it's just a quick rinse.

I personally believe in trimming the butt as much as possible, though there are two camps on this. Some people say that you should leave as much of the fat on the butt to ensure that the butt doesn't dry out. I'm of the other camp.

Mix up the injection - 2 cups fruit juice to one cup Fab P. If you have time (I didn't this year) mix up the injection marinade 24 hours in advanced.

Once your pork and marinade is ready fill up your injector. I use the heavy duty Spitjack.

Inject into the meat. Try to make sure you get an even distribution and that your meat takes as much as it can hold.

Once you have injected the meat with as much marinade as it will hold you can then begin to work on flavoring the outside of the meat.

Put a single layer of large foil on your work surface. You want to make sure that the foil is big enough to wrap your butt in... the butt you are working on.

Put down a layer of honey. Honey is great and it comes in my flavors, colors and varieties. Use the cheap stuff here. I have found very little difference using the stuff that comes from the supermarket in a plastic squeeze container as opposed to using the much more expensive small run or "gourmet" type honey.

I put down a thin layer of rub. I think this is more superstition than actually doing anything.

Before I put the meat onto the foil I generously coat in rub. This is the side I am going to put down onto the foil.

I have put the "rubbed" side down on the foil. Now I coat the top side with additional rub. You can see the meat is just soaking up the color and flavor.

Put a little more honey on top, just a light coating.

Wrap it up in the foil. Then wrap a second time.

Wrap it up just like you would a package.

Place the whole thing in a 2 gallon plastic bag and put in the refrigerator. Let sit at least overnight if not for 24 hours.

Once you are ready get your smoker going. I highly advocate using a charcoal chimney instead of lighter fluid and use natural charcoal to reduce the amount of chemicals you are putting into your food.

Once the smoker stabilizes at between 200 and 225 degrees it is time to put your meat on.

After a couple of hours I like to flip and rotate the meat to make sure that the meat is getting cooked evenly. I also add another coat of rub to the meat for additional flavor.

I usually check on the meat every hour or two. As you can see here I have gotten a beautiful bark on the outside of this pork. I don't like it when the pork gets totally blackened so I decided that I wanted to preserve this color.

In order to do that I wrapped the pork in foil and put it back on the smoker.

Bring the meat up to between 200 and 205 degrees. Yes that high. You want this to be a slow cooking process that breaks down the connective tissue. That will do it. Once you are done put it in a tin, cover in foil and let rest for at least 1 hour.

Meanwhile it is time to mix up your finishing sauce. 2 simple ingredients, 1 cup apple cider vinegar, 1/4 cup packed dark brown sugar.

Drop the sugar into the vinegar.

Mix Well

Once your butt has rested for 1 hour it should be ready to pull. The blade bone should come out without any resistance. You can use 2 forks to pull the meat. Pour your finishing sauce right over the pork, mix it up and serve.

Serve plain on a plate, on a bun like a sandwich, mixed with coleslaw or any other way your heart desires. If you have leftovers, we didn't, then you can add it as a topping to your next pizza, make a chili out of it or just heat it in it's own juices and scarf it down.

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About

***Originally printed as a guest spot at http://www.datenightdoins.com/Pulled_Pork_Guest_Chef_Chri.html***

I like to smoke and BBQ food all year round but for many people nothing says Memorial day better than a good BBQ. In my opinion you don't get better barbeque than pulled pork. Don't get me wrong, I love a good brisket now and again but there is nothing better than pork. You can get sweet, spicy and savory going all at once. You can serve it on a sandwich, on a plate naked, with slaw or any number of other ways but any way you pull it you can't beat it.