Smoking the Pork Butt

I LOVE PULLED PORK…..Smoked pulled pork is even better. So here we will go over smoking pulled pork at home.

Last year my darling husband bought me a Masterbuilt Bluetooth Electric Smoker and I have been working on mastering the art of smoking meat. I am definitely not a master of it but I am learning and enjoying every moment of it.

Yes, I named my smoker Sir Smokesalot! The app for my smoker recommended naming it, so it had to be something fun! haha

First thing I do is preheat my smoker. I set the temperature to 240F to get it going while I prep my pork butt. I like to line the bottom of my smoker with foil, and I also place foil in the water basin to catch the rendered juices that fall from the meat. Makes cleanup that much faster!

To prep my meat, I liberally apply mustard all over the top, bottom, sides of the pork butt. Then I place my seasoning and rub it in all over that. Today I used American Royal Smokey Applewood Rub that I got at Wal-Mart.

Once the smoker is to temp, I lower the temp to 235F and place my pork butt on the bottom rack and insert my thermometer probe into the center.

The thing about smoking is that the timing is always so completely different for every piece of meat and also the weather place a part in the cook as well. A general rule of thumb is 2 hours for every lb of meat. I have not found this to be consistent for me. I try to plan for 3 hours for every lb.

For my smoke, I use a mix of hickory and cherry wood chips for my smoker. The smell just makes me so happy. I add wood chips every hour over the first 4 hours. By this point it’s taken all the smoke it’s going to and it’s just a waiting game. Once my internal temperature gets to 165, it always stalls out and stays at this temp for quite a while. Depending on time restraints, I’ll let it continue to slowly cook or I’ll bump up the heat to 260F to speed up the cooking process. Today I bumped up to 250F, letting it take an additional 4 hours to get to its internal temp of 200F.

Once the internal temp reaches 195F, your meat should be ready. You can let it go a little bit longer if it doesnt feel like its as tender and pull apart as you would like. I aim for about 200F for my internal temp.

I put my meat in the smoker at 8:30AM and it wasnt finished until 5:15PM. So my 3.5lb pork butt slow-cooked for about 8 hours to get to 200F, which was perfect pull-apart tenderness. Smoking pulled pork can be time consuming, but the payoff is worth it!

Serve with your favorite BBQ sauce on top of a bun, with some slaw on the side; or if you are really adventurous on top! We also like to have oven baked potato wedges with our BBQ sandwiches.

Need a great slaw recipe…check out my favorite here.

You can also check out my favorite way to cook potato wedges here.