Pulled Pork Temperatures - A Report on My First Pulled Pork Success

I've finally done a successful preparation of pulled pork, and wanted to write about it to document the temperatures that newbies need to know.

First, i have to give credit where due. I read all the articles on pulled pork at about.com. The write ups there are great. I also used the mop recipe from there, and the "Memphis rub" recipe from Steven Raichlen's Barbecue Bible. I'm sure you can find it on his website. It's the same rub he uses for his beer can chicken.

OK, on to the critical information. The pork fat renders at about 172 degrees. After that, the collagen (that tissue that holds the meat to the bone) renders out at about 178 degrees. I didn't make these up, or even measure them. Rather, an old pro on smoking pork told them to me last week. And, in my first trial after hearing them, I feel they are reliable. At least, the results have been great.

My New Year's Eve pork was a disaster. Fortunately, nobody showed up at my hose to eat it. Karma seems to have smiled on me in that regard. My Christmas tri-tip was a roaring success and there was a house full of people to eat it. My new year's eve pork and brisket were horrible failures, and only one couple showed up. So, we tossed the meat in the garbage and filled up on salad and mashed potatoes.

For posterity, I'll document my failure. I ran the smoker cooler than I had in previous runs, and I didn't give them enough time.

See, on Thanksgiving I smoked a turkey - my first ever smoking experiment. Having read up as much as I could, I planned a six hour ordeal. I put the bird on the grille at about 9:30 in the morning. And, to my surprise (and my wife's stress) the thing was up to temperature in about three hours. So, I pulled him, wrapped him if foil and some beach towels, and stuck him in the oven at 200 degrees. It was excellent, but left me thinking that I'd over-estimated the time needed.

Next I smoked a chicken. No great story there. Honestly, I didn't like it. The meat was, as might be expected, still moist and soft. But, I didn't like the texture. It seemed too wet - almost slimy. Now, will say that after a disappointing meal, I put the leftovers in the refrigerator and ate them for the next week. chilled and reheated in the microwave - they were great! The microwave dried them out a bit more, and they still had that smoke flavor. So, the chicken experiment wasn't a total loss. Again, though, I brought that chicken to temperature in less than three hours.

So, then I set out to try pork butt (shoulder) and beef brisket. I set up for a six hour smoke, and consciously held my temperatures in the oven lower than I had before. My smoker has one of those thermometers on the barrel cover. And, in all my previous runs, I'd watched it at 200 to 215 degrees. Well, come to find out, that temperate is a bit cooler than the temperature at the cooking surface. I put an oven thermometer at the cooking surface and found it to be off by as much as 50 degrees.

So, for my new year's eve run, I tied to keep a cooking surface temperature (measured by my oven thermometer) of 210 degrees, which equated to a barrel temperature reading of 150 to 170 degrees. Well, I know now, that's not hot enough. After six hours in the smoker, my meats were at 150 degrees, struggling to get to 160. We were ready for dinner, so I pulled them and put them in the oven at 300 just to get them to a "safe" temperature of 165.

Well, eating a pork butt that's been cooked to 165 is, frankly, gross. The butt is a nasty cut. It's so marbled though with fat that it's inedible. It was disgusting. The brisket was about the same. We hated it.

Then, I talked to my uncle Mace, who's got the expertise. I've had his smoked ribs before, and know that he knows what he's doing. He told me those temperatures, and I came back ready to try again.

I didn't have a full day's worth of wood, today. So, my plan was to smoke the meat - at a cooking surface temperature of 250 - for a few hours, and then put it in the oven in foil and watch the temperatures. I had the meat on the grill by about 10 or 10:30 this morning. My wood actually lasted longer than I'd expected. I had a small bag of apple wood that I'd never used on Thanksgiving which lasted me over 5 hours. I pulled the meat from the smoker at 3 in the afternoon, and put it in the oven at 250. There it cooked for about four more hours!

All in all, it came out great. I let it ride up to 185 degrees before I took it out from the oven. I pulled the meat apart with two forks and we served it in sandwiches for dinner, lunch the next day, and beyond. I still think I can raise the internal temperatures, judging by the nearly 10 hour time. Gosh, I sure hope I'll be able to do it faster than that. One funny thing was the color. The center of the pork was white and the outsides were pink. Actually, about half way into the center it changed from pink to white. My wife and I suspected that this was due to the transition from the smoker to the oven. If anyone reading this can confirm or deny that, I'd be interested to know.