What is up you guys? It's Susie from HeyGrillHey.com and
today, we are doing maybe the simplest smoked pulled pork we
can possibly do. We're also running it hot and fast. This
bad boy is going to be done in under eight hours. It's
going to be smokey, saucy, absolutely delicious, and you
only need a couple of ingredients. Let's do it.
You
If you are familiar with my original smoked pulled pork,
you know that bad boy takes almost 20 hours. It is low and
slow but sometimes you gotta get a pork butt done in one day
and that's exactly what this recipe is for. It's cooked at a
higher temperature. We're running at 275 the entire time.
We're also going to be using a foil wrap sometimes called the
Texas Crutch to push us through the stall. Keep things
incredibly moist and we're going to end up with
beautifully tender, melt in your mouth pulled pork, and
it's super duper yummy. So, first, we gotta prep our pork
shoulder. Now, this pork shoulder is about seven pounds
anywhere between 6 to 8 pounds for your pork shoulder works
great. For this recipe, you want to pick something that is
really well marbled. You want a lot of fat in between the
muscle fibers itself. It's going to help keep things
flavorful and keep things juicy. Now, typically, for my
low and slow pork, I will just season this bad boy and get a
on the smoker but because we're going hot and fast, we're
going to get rid of a little excess weight here and we're
going to trim off this fat cap. It's going to give us more
surface area to take on more smoke with the short amount of
time it's in the smoker and it's going to help us develop a
really nice bark on the outside. Alright, that looks
great. In a low and slow cook, we want that fat. It's kind of
an insulator and to really melt down around the meat and
self-based but with the hot and fast method, it's just not
necessary. So, now that we've got it trimmed, we're going to
season on all sides with your favorite barbecue seasoning.
I'm going to be using my sweet rub seasoning. It's a great
classic brown sugar-based barbecue seasoning. It has all
of the yummies in there that are going to make this pork
taste awesome. You can actually grab a bottle in my on my
website Hey Grill Hay or I have the recipe if you want to make
it at home.
Okay, our seasoned pork butt is going to hit the smoker 275
degrees. This is hot enough for us to still get a really good
robust smoke flavor and cool enough that it's not going to
burn the sugars on the outside of our pork shoulder. We're
going to close the lid and let this roll until the shoulder
reaches an internal temperature of about 165 degrees
Fahrenheit. We're happy with the color on the outside of the
bark and then we'll be ready for our next step. This
typically takes about four to 4 and a half hours for a pork
butt this size.
Now, as far as wood choice goes, you really can't go wrong
with pork shoulder but we're leaning a little bit sweet
here. So, I think this does really well with an apple or a
cherry or even a maple.
It's time for phase two of our super easy smoked pulled pork.
We're going to lay out a couple pieces of wide, heavy-duty foil
because our pork shoulder has hit our target temperature of
160 to 165 degrees and I'm really happy with how that
external crust is looking. Alright, now we just gotta wrap
this guy up and we want to do it quickly so that we don't
lose heat off of the pork but I'm going to drizzle it with
everything barbecue sauce. This is a really classic Kansas City
Kansas City style barbecue sauce that I sell in my store
but I also have a great Kansas City style barbecue recipe on
my website and an app then we're going to wrap it up
really tightly. If you're one that likes extra juicyness in
your final finished pork product. You can also add about
a/ 2 a cup of apple juice here and we just want to take this
foil as tight against the pork shoulder as possible. We really
don't want a lot of air pockets and steam happening in here. We
want to keep all of that heat in. This is going to keep our
pork shoulder juicy but it's also going to speed up the
cooking process.
Back to the smoker.
Alright, our pork shoulder is off of the smoker. It hit our
target temperature of, well, it actually overshot our target
temperature just a little bit. I usually try to pull it off
right around 200 degrees Fahrenheit but when it was that
temperature, my videographer was napping. So, it cooked
until 202 degrees.
Sorry. It was worth it. Look how refreshed he looks. It'll
still be great at 202 ° Fahrenheit. Really the
tenderness was there and that's what we're looking for. I know
it's going to have delicious flavor because it's all been
wrapped up. So, we pulled it off the smoker and it has been
resting now for about 45 minutes. I usually shoot for
about an hour of rest time. So, let's quickly go over our
timeline because this was kind of like the same day pork
shoulder story. I this bad boy on the smoker right about 9 AM
this morning we wrapped it I would say between 1 and 130 and
it was ready to come off the smoker and start resting at 4
o'clock meaning five o'clock ding ding ding it's dinner time
and this pork shoulder is ripped roaring ready to go so I
think that is kind of the perfect scenario if you're
going to be doing a same day cook if you can get it all
smoked and rested in under eight hours and have a
delicious result It's the best of all worlds in my opinion.
So, let's crack this bad boy open and show you what we're
working with.
Now, I don't want to lose this beautiful juice that we work so
hard for so I've got this sitting in a cast iron skillet.
It'll help retain the heat really really well for serving
but it'll also catch all of these yummy smoky pork juices.
You can also use just like a nine by thirteen pan. Be cool
baby. Now, you can see this is a slightly different bark than
we would get if we were cooking this uncovered for the whole 18
plus hours that we typically do a pork shoulder for. However,
however, we're going to make up for it with all of the moisture
and the flavor and the time that we were able to save in
the cooking process. So, I don't think one is inherently
better over the other. I just think it's a choice and it's a
different process and it yields slightly different results.
Now, we just shredded into all of the yummy juices and remove
the bone and any excess gristle and we're ready to go. I mean,
that bone came out clean.
Alright that looks absolutely beautiful to me it took about
maybe a minute and a half to get it to shredded because it
was just willing to fall apart now one step I always take
before serving my smoked pulled pork is to sprinkle it with a
little bit additional rub that I used in the very beginning
it's a great flavor layer builder reinforces all of the
flavors that we put on the outside of the pork shoulder
but it brings them a little bit more to the inside because
that's a big cut of meat and our seasoning was all the way
around but it wasn't all the way inside. So, by adding a
little sprinkle at the end, it brings all of those flavors all
the way through the meat.
Now, I am typically a sauce on the side kind of a person and I
still will be but I'm going to hit the top of this with just a
little drizzle of that everything sauce. Again,
reinforcing the flavors that we introduced throughout the
cooking process. This isn't going to be enough to make the
pulled pork saucy but it's going to add a little pop, a
little zip because of the acidity and the sweetness in
the sauce itself. Also, because it just looks gorgeous, look at
this beautiful skillet of deliciousness. Can I eat it
now? This looks like a good piece for me.
You know I was a little bit worried it was going to be
overdone and maybe mushy but that's not the case at all it
has great texture great amount of smoke great flavor building
from everything we put in there and it's nice and moist I think
this is kind of a quintessential pulled pork I
really think we sacrifice nothing in terms of flavor by
doing it faster and we saved ourselves a bunch of times if
you're looking for a same day pulled pork I think this is the
perfect way to go we do this often I don't always plan far
enough ahead to start smoking the day before. It happens.
It's fine. I don't think we've sacrificed anything here to get
this pulled pork done in the eight hours that we did. It's
absolutely delicious. I feel like you guys are going to love
this one. It's perfect to start piling on top of buns for
sandwiches into tacos, shove it in a stuffed baked potato, and
you'll have leftovers for days to use in a million different
ways. I hope this quick and easy smoked pulled pork helps
you guys feel a little bit more like the backyard barbecue
hero. I know you really are. Deep deep down inside. We'll
catch you guys next time.