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First Pulled Pork Cook (with pics)


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Hi all,
 
I'll preface this by saying that I had a huge amount of help from over on Smoking Meat Forums when I posted about my plans to cook pulled pork for the first time. It was probably the main reason that I was able to nail this cook. :)
 
Prep
I did my pre the night before. I removed almost all of the surface fat and silverskin and the applied rub. Once trimmed, I injected it with a mix of apple juice and water, mixed with a little of my own all purpose rub. I then rubbed with my all purpose rub (recipe on my site) followed by a generous layer of Traeger's 'Pork & Poultry' rub. It then sat in the fridge overnight.
 
fjWDOu2.jpg 
sYLSiK3.jpg 
 
Cook
I'll try not to go into detail too much but essentially the cook followed these steps:
  1. Place on Traeger (Hickory and Cherry) @ 250°F for 3 hours  then spray
  2. Check colour after 6 hours (I left it for longer to get a bit darker)
  3. Once the colour is good (dark brown), wrap tightly in foil and put into oven @ 275°F with temperature probes in.
  4. Once internal temperature reaches 207°F, take out and check tenderness. If bone is easy to remove, and it feels soft, wrap and rest in cool bag (I actually let it rest in the warm oven).
Start of the cook
pmHREar.jpg 
3 hours in
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7 hours in
J8u2Bhg.jpg
 
Result
qyqjbQ4.jpg 
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Ultimately, I wouldn't actually do anything differently next time... I may have gotten different results by using different seasonings or cooking for longer but it was an incredible cut of pork (from a wonderful farm) and was very easy to cook.
 
There seems to be conflicting advice when it comes to pulled pork (to wrap or not to wrap, trim all the fat or some etc.) but it seems clear that pork shoulder can take a lot and still turn out right. If it's a good quality bit of meat, I'd advise taking off all visible fat (not leaving a fat cap) as there's plenty of fat running through it. Wrapping also helped it to cook faster and meant that I was able to be naughty and add some butter and extra apple juice for more flavour. :) 
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