Smoking a Pork Boston Butt
By Bill Wight, cbbqa member
Posted August 24, 2003
One of the traditional cuts of meat used for barbecue is the whole pork shoulder or more commonly in California, the Boston Butt. Despite the name 'butt' the cut is from the shoulder of the hog, not the butt, where the hams are located.
Smoked pork butt is one of my favorites and despite the 8 to 12 hours required, is the easiest cut of meat for beginners to master, as it is very 'forgiving'.
The photo above shows a smoked and 'pulled' Boston butt. 'Pulled'
refers to the method of tearing the meat apart by hand or with two
forks. The meat is so tender it can be easily pulled apart.
In the process of pulling the pork butt, the fat between the muscles is
also removed and discarded. The pulled pork can now be eaten as is
or chopped and served on a 'pulled pork' sandwich with your favorite
barbecue sauce.
A whole pork shoulder is hard to find in California as the butchers cut it into two portions, the Boston Butt and the Picnic shoulder or Ham. The picnic ham is the lower portion of the hog's front leg. Personally, I find the picnic cut to be more work to 'pull' and remove the fat than the butt and despite the lower cost of the picnic compared to the butt, the higher percentage of fat and non-usable material in the picnic make it about the same price as a butt when comparing cost of finished and cleaned meat. I have not smoked a picnic for several years due to more work required to clean up the meat.
Smoking a Boston Butt
Most Boston Butts are in the range of 8 pounds with the bone in. The process is barbecuing a butt is pretty simple. Rub it, cook it, pull it.
First, start you barbecue and get it up to temperature, 220 to 275F.
Open the package and give the butts a rub with cheap yellow mustard. This adds some flavor and helps the 'butt rub' to stay on the outside of the meat. As for rubs, most any barbecue rub will do. However, I like to use a rub with little of no sugar in it as the butt turns out a deep red color instead of black, as it will if you use a rub with a lot of sugar in it.
Whatever butt rub you use, give the outside of the meat a generous rub with the spice blend.
Bill's Butt Rub
8 tablespoons paprika
4 teaspoons salt
4 teaspoons onion powder
4 teaspoons garlic powder
2 teaspoons cumin
4 teaspoons black pepper
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
Mix ingredients and store in an air-tight bottle.
There are many commercial rubs available that are very good on pork
butts. One of my favorites is sold by
Head Country. CBBQA
members, BBQ'n Fools and
Todd's Out Of This World
make great rubs that you can order by phone. Don't tell anyone,
but I heard that both the BBQ'n Fools and Todd use their commercial rubs
when they compete in barbecue contests.
For 'tried and true' rub recipes you can mix up yourself:
Click here for several,
Click here for
hundreds and download the 'Spice
Blends' cookbook.
OK, so you've got your butt rubbed, put the meat on the cooking grill and covered the barbecue. Every 2 hours, turn the butts over and rotate so no side gets too much heat. I no longer mop or baste my pork butts as the fat on and within the meat self bastes them. If you want to mop, by all means go ahead. You can use a mixture of 50:50 canola oil, apple juice and a tablespoons of your butt rub. Mop the butts when you turn them.
After 8 hours of cooking, I will usually stick the Polder temperature probe into the meat. It's done when the internal temperature in above 190F. This temperature will arrive faster the higher the temperature you keep the cooking chamber. I usually no longer bother checking the temperature as I have barbecued so many butts, I can now tell by a fork jab if the meat is ready to come off the smoker.
Let the butts rest for about an hour and then with gloves on your hands begin to tear it apart, discarding the bone, the fat, connective tissue and gristle as you go along.
Barbecued pork butt can be eaten sliced, pulled or pulled and chopped. I like it all three ways and especially in Pulled Pork Sandwiches.
I like to use 'gourmet' style hamburger buns to serve the pulled pork on, resulting in a pulled pork sandwich. Open the bun, squirt on some sauce, heap on some pulled pork and add some more sauce and put the top in the bun. the pulled pork sandwich should be dripping sauce as you eat it.
I like to serve pulled pork with a Kansas City style sauce. Here is the recipe for my favorite. When I use this sauce for pulled pork sandwiches, I often will add a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar to a cup of this sauce to give it a little more 'tang' and a pinch of cayenne chile powder to give it a little more 'bite'.
In the Carolinas, the pulled pork sandwiches are served with a scoop
of coleslaw on the sandwich or on the side. A real Carolina pulled
pork sandwich will also use a very different sauce, consisting of
vinegar and hot peppers. this sauce is something you need to grow
up with and is not very popular with Californians.
Related information:
- Luau Pig in an Imu step by step
- BBQ FAQ on barbecue ribs
- Information about Spare ribs
- Information about St. Louis-style Spare ribs
- Information about Back ribs
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