Boston Butt Pulled Pork With Jimmy Kennedy

Hey, everybody, Jimmy Kennedy here with Go Out{side}. We’re at my house today and we’re going to show you how to do one of my favorite things. Pork butt pulled pork. And I say this about so many recipes. I say that about every time, I guess. But this is truly one of my favorite. And something I make every week as a caterer.
I serve a lot of pulled pork and I’ll load this whole smoker up sometimes. And that’s not even enough. I’ll have this completely packed, like several hundred pounds of pork butt. And that’s what we start with. We just start with the pork butt and it’s not from the butt section of the pig, it’s actually from the front shoulder and a shoulder roast will work.
But this pork butt is loaded with fat and loaded with flavor. It is so good. And this is just your standard size they’re about five or 6 pounds, usually each. You can see it’s got fat on both sides. Fat cap here. We’ll just get started and all you have to do is take some of this fat off. You don’t have to like get on the inside, but you just want to trim it.
Basically take some of this fat cap off here. Just keep going at it. And they all look just about identical. They’re all going to have fat in the same spots.
Any pieces you see, you don’t think you want to have to pull later. And what this is going to do, this is going to cook down to where it’s completely tender. So you’ll have to go through it again. And kind of look for like little spots you’ve missed, which that’s fine, too, because you’re going to miss some. There’s some we just can’t get to with a knife and this little piece is always right there.
Some people go kind of crazy on this and they just keep going and going and going, but you’re going to be able to get this off the meat once it cooks. It’s a lot easier that I find. Just getting a head start so that’s all we’re doing. And that’s all it is, maybe a little more takes a good sharp knife helps a lot.
Put this in aluminum. This is what I do. These disposable pans. I’ll use the big ones and put three in each one. But these little ones hold one really well. And we just have the magic rub and this is key. I meant there’s a lot of great rub recipes. You can buy this straight from the store. This is something I make and it’s equal parts pretty much.
Of sugar, salt, and spice and a lot of brown sugar. White sugar. Cumin is a good one. Paprika, I mean I’ll probably have this recipe on the website, but you might want to check it out. It’s it works for anything on the grill, but it gives this stuff so much flavor. And unlike the name, you don’t have to rub it in just kind of sprinkle it on.
It’s going to soak right in there any way you want to get it on both sides in the middle and this thing is ready now a lot of times I’ll put the rub on and just let it sit all night in the fridge. I think it just permeates the meat a little better. But there’s really no need for that.
Aluminum foil and get a good tight seal.
On this I cook this at like pretty low.
225, sometimes 250. I’ll let it go for anywhere from 12 to 16 hours. It’s a long cook. You just want it to fall apart when you pull it. I’ll show you what it looks like. You take a set of tongs grab the meat, it just falls right apart and then you kind of let it cool a bit and go through it again and I’ll show you that we just put this right here on the smoker close it up.
This is the old smoker here. I’ve had this thing here for probably 15 years it has cranked out some stuff. Yeah, the fire is a little low now. We’ll get it back up to 250 and let this go and I’ll show you what it looks like a little bit. All right. For sake of time, I put one in the smoker for us yesterday, so just to show you how to pull it, I didn’t think we’d want to sit around for ten or 12 hours and wait in on this thing.
So put it back in this morning. For a couple of hours. Nice and hot. Oh yeah, see all the fat that comes off that thing, all the grease. That’s all from the internal fat. And a lot of flavor in that for sure. And it just pulls right apart. So it’s just like falling apart. And that’s what you want.
That’s what you want right there.
What I do is usually too hot to grab with your hands. So I kind of use the tongs and kind of go through and try to get the good stuff first. Just keep going and going. Do you see any bad spots, any fat? I just kind of put that to the side I’ll load this whole bowl up like this, like there’s some stuff
We don’t want to put all that back in there, do the whole thing and just go through it and go through it and make sure you got nothing but meat when you’re ready to serve boom. So barbecue sauce next steps to make a sandwich out of this thing with coleslaw, stuff’s delicious and can never have too much sauce this is delicious.
Delicious. Pulled pork so it does take a while to cook, but it’s worth it. I promise you you can also. You don’t really necessarily have to have a smoker with this. You could cook this on a charcoal grill, you could cook it on a pellet grill. Anything really even even a fire. The idea is to just keep indirect heat on this for as long as possible.
You know, people try it. I think we overcomplicate this this smoking thing, but all you got to do with pulled pork, put it in a pan, aluminum foil, keep it off direct heat, and just cook it at around 225 – 250 for a very long time. Low and slow is key, and that’s worth it. It’s good.