What Is Pulled Pork?

Pulled Pork is normally made by smoking or cooking a Boston Butt or Pork Shoulder up to an internal temperature of about 190°. Cooking it up to this temperature breaks down the collagen and connective tissue within the pork and gives you the classic pulled pork texture.

Meat Block

Pork Shoulder or Pork Butt

Additives

Soluble Pa’s Black Bull
Southwest Mesquite Rub
Butter Flavored Seasoning
Texas Style Rump Rub

Process

We are going to do two types today, one we are going to smoke and the other we are going to cook with our Vacmaster SV1 Sous Vide Cooker, for both of these we will be using our new Waltons Automatic Syringe Injector.

For the smoked one we are going to inject it with Soluble Pa’s Black Bull Seasoning and we’ll rub the outside with Smokehouse BBQ Seasoning. A quick note here, when you are choosing a seasoning to inject or marinate meat look for something that contains phosphates, they increase the water holding capacity of your meat so you will have a juicier finished product.

We will dissolve 6.2 oz of the seasoning in 2 quart of water and then inject the Butt with as much as it will hold. If you like a lighter flavored pulled pork then you can inject smaller amounts, its not a cure so feel free to use as much or as little as you want. Once this has been fully injected we will start smoking it. Now, it’s a large thick cut so it is going to take anywhere from 8-10 hours for it to reach the 190°.

For our Sous Vide Pork Butt we are going to inject it with Butter Flavored Seasoning & Marinade and rub the outside with the Texas Style Rump Rub. We will dissolve the seasoning in a quart of water and then we will inject it until we have increased the starting weight by at least 10% or until the Butt will not hold anymore water. Next we are going to vacuum pack it and Sous Vide cook it at 165° for 24 or so hours and then we will see if cooking it at this temperature for this long will still give us that nice pulled pork texture.

Thermal Processing & Smoking

Smoke at 220° until internal temp is 190°
OR
Sous Vide at 165° for 22 hours and then increase to 190° for 2 hours.

Cooling

If you have cooked your pork long enough and gotten it to the right temperature you should be able to slide the bone out fairly easily and then use something like these Heat Resistant Gloves and just pull it apart by hand. If not you can use Man Claws or a Pork Puller.

Wrap up

So, all in all both were great ways to do pulled pork, the Sous Vide was a little simpler and required no baby sitting of any kind but in general I liked the traditional smoked pulled pork a little bit better.

Additional Tips

• Another thing to remember is as you heat up anything under vacuum the gas will expand so you wont have a 100% vacuum
• We intentionally overpumped this so a lot of liquid cooked out during the process, which was fine as it was in the bag so it just cooked it in that liquid.

Watch WaltonsTV: How To Make Pulled Pork