Pulled Pork

This is basically the same as chuckie but with pork instead of beef. Pork butts are readily available and delicious and not particularly expensive.

Ingredients

Preparation

Dry brine the meat a day in advance. Use 1 tsp kosher salt per pound of meat. Rest in a fridge, uncovered overnight.

When you are ready to cook the pork, take it out of the fridge and apply yellow mustard or mayonaise liberally to the surface. This will give the rub something to stick to. You can skip this if you really want to. I won't even care. Apply rub liberally to all sides of the meat. Basically, you want as much as will stick to the meat on there.

In a spray bottle, mix equal parts apple juice, apple cider vinegar, and water. This can be used for multiple things so make a bunch if you plan to keep doing things like this. Shake it up to mix everything together.

Set the smoker or oven or whatever to 225°F. Put the pork butt up in there. Every hour or so, spray it with the apple mixture to enusre the outside doesn't get too dry. This will make the "bark" have a really nice texture but if you are super lazy you can skip it. The pork will take around two hours per pound to cook, but that is a very rough estimate and you should monitor the temperature rather than going by time alone.

When the internal temperature of the pork shoulder reaches 203°F, the pork is done. Remove it from the heat and wrap it in foil. Let it rest for at least 30 minutes. If you are way ahead of schedule, or you just want to wait a long time to eat, you can cover the pork with towels and put it in a cooler. It should stay plenty hot for up to 4 hours this way.

Cut the finished pork into manageable chunks and then use forks to shred the meat. Serve it with BBQ sauce and coleslaw on sandwiches or make tacos or do whatever you feel is best.

Notes

If the pork is taking too long to cook, and it's already been smoking for a couple hours, you can crank the temperature up to 300°F to speed things along.

Many meats will "stall" cooking around 165°F. This is apparently caused by the water from the fat rendering evaporating at such a rate that it balances out the cooking, causing the temperature to stay the same for a period. This is nothing to worry about. If you aren't impatient you don't need to do anything about this but just wait and the meat will start getting hotter again after a while, when all the fat renders out.

I recommend making way more of this than you plan to eat because it freezes really well and you can make chile verde later. If you are saving some for later, freeze it whole rather than pulling it.