I have made many variations of pulled pork over the years starting with my Grandma’s Porchetta recipe. This one is a new experiment where the pork shoulder is wrapped in pink/peach butcher paper once it hits the stall so that it can finish to a higher internal temp without drying out.
For those of your that wonder why your roast takes so long to smoke and it never seems to get past 150-160F, that is “the stall”. At that point the evaporative cooling prevents the meat from climing higher until a significant portion of the water is lost. Then after a few hours (or seemingly an eternity when you have a bunch of guests coming for dinner) the temperature will start to rise. For many cuts such as pork shoulder or brisket, the final temp should be in the 195-205 range where the collagen breaks down. There is a big difference in the texture just going from 195-202 and then holding for an hour or so. So after doing more research where I was looking for brisket tips I came across the idea of wrapping the roast in peach paper once it hits the stall to accelerate the cooking and hold in moisture.
This is an overnight smoke with the temperature controlled by the HeaterMeter.
8lb Pork Shoulder / Boston Butt bone in . Trim off excess fat.
Start the smoker and preheat to 225F
Season liberally with granulated garlic, Penzey’s lemon pepper, Sinnamon Chipotle rub and salt. Rub it in.
Place meat on smoker (indirect heat with a BGE). This was at 6:30PM
9:30 PM reduce temp to 205F (not sure if this is necessary ).
6:30 AM internal temp was 136-151 depending on probe location. Smoker is still at 205F.
Wrap in 2 layers of peach paper. Return to the smoker and raise the temp to 275F.
At noon it was pulled from the smoker with an internal temp of 203F and placed in a small cooler. where it remained until 2:30. By then the internal temp had dropped to 163.
Pull apart and eat. It was juicy and pull apart tender. We had to hold most of it until dinner in the oven at 190F covered, with a bottle of Leinies Honey Weiss added.
Total time in the smoker 18 hrs. Hold in the cooler for 2.5 hrs but 1 would probably be sufficient.
Mark Bronkalla