Smoked Bourbon Brown Sugar Pulled Pork

This pulled pork recipe is fairly simple recipe to make and guaranteed to impress friends and family at your next gathering. The meat comes out so succulent and tender it could be shredded by hand and the bourbon brown sugar mop sauce gives the bark an amazingly sweet and tangy flavor.

Cooking Basics

The biggest thing you will need for this recipe is time. We will be cooking this using the “low and slow” method to allow all the connective tissue in the pork to break down and allow this meat to become super tender. I use my PitBoss 440D pellet smoker shown below to cook on but any type of setup that can allow for indirect heat will do. I would suggest using hickory or some kind of fruit wood for the smoke. I like to use apple anytime I’m cooking pulled pork. We will be cooking the pork at 225 deg. F the entire time. Cooking time will vary because no 2 pieces of meat are the same but you can estimate about 1 and a half hours per pound of pork you are cooking to try to get an idea on when it will be finished.

Pork Types

When you go to your store or local butcher, you will find all kinds of names for the pork you can use for this. Boston Butt, Boston Butt Roast, and Pork Shoulder are all very similar pieces of meat that come off the shoulder of the pig. The boston butt is the upper part near the spine and the shoulder is a bit lower. The last time I made this, I used a boston butt that had the bone removed. Any of these pieces will be fine for pulled pork. If you get a cut of meat that has the bone in, don’t worry about removing it while prepping the meat. Cook with this in and when it is done, the bone will literally slide out. You will notice it’s a little dark in the picture below. I got a 9lb boston butt so I was up at 4 in the morning getting this thing on the smoker. That is dedication to the craft.

Meat Prep

The preperation for this is pretty straight forward. Usually you dont even have to trim anything off from the meat. Once you have the pork unpackaged, you will want to wipe it down with a paper towel and make sure there are no bone pieces on the exterior. Once this is completed, all you need to do is put a rub all over the pork. I don’t usually use a binder for this but if you would like to, the usual ones I would recommend for this recipe are mustard or oil. The binder typically does not affect the final flavor so it’s a matter of preference. For the rub, I used Pit Boss Pulled Pork Rub. It is more of a sweet rub than spicy but still has a ton of flavor. I will include a link down below if you are interested in getting it. I encourage you to try out different rubs to find the rub that you enjoy the most. Go to your local grocery store or look online and you will be able to find enough kinds of pork bbq rubs that you could fill an entire pantry. I have tried buying sveral kinds from the store and have even made my own on a couple of occasions. Whatever you choose to use, the important piece to this step is you want to coat all sides of the pork in the rub and use a generous amount when doing so. I promise you will not over season this cut of meat and it helps make the bark taste incredible.

Fire Up The Pit

Once you have the smoker / grill up to 225 deg. F, you need to put the meat on to cook. This sounds like a simple step but there is a raging debate among pit masters how to properly place the meat on the grill. Based on experience, I would recommend placing the fat cap up to let the it render and the juices will seep down into the meat. I will talk about this debate and my experiment in more detail down below in the Final Thoughts section if you are interested. Once the meat is on, it is time to make the mop sauce unless you did so ahead of time. You need to make sure this is ready to go at the first hour interval after putting the meat on. The ingredients for this are listed below in the recipe summary. Simply mix eveyrthing together, bring to a boil, and let it simmer for 20 minutes. Until the pork gets to 170 deg. F, the only thing we will be doing is applying the mop sauce to the pork every hour. If you have a mop, you will want to use it. If not, use a brush but try to be gentle we dont want to wipe the seasoning off the exterior before it can form the bark. We are going to let this pork stay on the smoker for around 6 to 7 hours until it gets to an internal temperature of 170 deg. F. Having a good thermometer is key for most recipes I have found. I use the Thermapen MK4 which is one of the best on the market.

Finish Cooking

Once the internal temperature of the meat has gotten to 170 deg. F, you will take it and put it in a pan of some kind. I use aluminum foil. Once you have the meat in the pan, you will take any leftover mop sauces and pour it over the meat and then seal it in by covering it with aluminum foil. This will allow the liquid to braise the meat and finish it off. We will now put it back on the smoker and leave it there until the internal temperature of the meat is somewhere between 200 deg. and 205 deg. F.

Rest

This part is perhaps one of the most important steps. You want to give the meat a chance the allow the juices to redistribute after cooking. This will help ensure it is as juicy and tender as it can be. You want to wait at least for about a half hour but this can be longer as well. If you get done cooking and have time before the meal, you can put this tray into a cooler and put towels over it and it can stay warm for hours. Once it has had time to rest, you will then just need to shred the pork to be ready to eat. Transfer the pork from the tray to a cutting board for this step and make sure to keep the liquid in the tray. We will use this If you have a bone in pork butt you should be able to remove the bone easily at this point. Once this is done, if you have meat claws, these are great for this step. If you do not, just use forks. The meat should fall apart at this point with no real effort on your part.

Dig In

The pulled pork is ready to eat. I like to take the juice that we got from the pan to pour it over the pork to give it some more flavor and help keep the meat moist. If you decide to do this make sure to seperate the fat from the juice before pouring over or it might be a bit too rich. If you have a fat seperator this is easy. If not pour the juice into a clear container and let it sit for a few minutes. Now you should be able to see the fat seperate from the juice that we want. Just take a spoon or cup measure and skim the fat off the top and you are ready to go.

Final Thoughts

• Fat Cap Up / Down - I have always been in the fat cap up camp. The argument for this made sense to me. The reasoning is that as the fat cap renders the juices flow down into the meat helping to flavor it and make it more tender. Recently I heard some compelling arguments for having the fat cap down. The reasoning for this is that the fat cap is supposed to protect the meat from the heat which helps the meat stay more tender and not dry out. I decided this time i was going to try fat cap down just to try it out and here is what I learned. If you intend to do this I would place the pork onto a grate that you can then use to move it while cooking. I put it right on the grate and when I got to the step that I needed to move it to an aluminum pan part of the fat cap ripped off and stayed on the grate. I had to scrape it off and it made a big mess to clean up after I was done cooking. The meat did come out very tender but I didnt see it being much different than when I had the fat cap up. My final opinion is to keep the fat cap up. Cleaning the grate after the fat cap came off was a total pain and and I did not notice much of a difference to how the meat came out.

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