Smoked Pork Butt

Veteran's Day gave me an excuse to get outdoors and cook. I was looking at the meat in Albertson's and saw that their pork butt roasts were on sale, I took a closer look, only to find a 7 1/2 lbs hunk of meat for only $4! Now I am a college student, so any kind of deal like that I cannot pass up. Needless to say, I had absolutely no problem coming up with an idea with what to do with it....Pulled Pork, baby! Since Joe's birthday was in the next couple of days, I thought that this was an ideal time to cook one of his favorites! My parents have a smoker at their house so I packed up my car and headed out there for the day to smoke my pork butt.

I did marinate the pork butt overnight, to ensure a flavorful tender meat. I simply made one inch slices all over the meat and inserted whole cloves of garlic into each hole, then I seasoned the entire thing with salt and pepper, and made a sauce with apple cider vinegar, brown sugar, dried mustard, cumin, a little ginger, soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce. I then wrapped it in plastic wrap and stuck it in the fridge overnight.

In the smoker I used natural wood charcoal and created wood with water soaked wood chips and fresh herbs, rosemary and sage (since I have an abundance of them). The time you need to completely smoke a piece of meat the size that I was dealing with, would have taken me around 21 hours to finish. I simply did not have the time (or patience) to wait that long. So, I smoked the pork for about 4 hours (enough time to absorb that amazing smokey flavor) and then stuck it in a pyrex dish, covered it with foil and baked at 400 degrees in the oven till the meat reached the correct temperature.

 

At this point the meat was done but not pulled pork consistency (we still ate some at this point and it was moist and incredibly flavorful). The next day I put the rest of the pork butt in my crock pot on low all afternoon and returned to find the best pulled pork ever. You can tell when pork butt is fall apart ready when the shoulder bone come clean out of the meat. I served this on buns with some homemade bbq sauce. Nom nom nom.