Smoked Pork Butt with a Scored Black Bark
smoked pork butt for the crew
This is the cheapest good thing you can cook. A bone-in pork butt runs about two dollars a pound and feeds a room, and the only skill it asks of you is leaving it alone for ten hours.
Two things make it look like the picture. The first is scoring the fat into a grid before the rub goes on, which is why the finished bark breaks into tiles instead of one slab of black. The second is not pulling it. Everybody shreds this cut on principle. Broken into thick pieces along the seams it holds more juice and it eats like a roast, which is what it actually is.
No sauce. The bark is the sauce.
- Feeds
- 10 to 12
- Hands-on
- 30 minutes
- On the smoker
- 9–11 hours
- Start
- The night before
What you need
The pork — the night before
- 1 bone-in pork butt, 8–10 lb — fat cap left on
- 3 tbsp yellow mustard, as a binder and nothing else
- 3 tbsp coarse kosher salt
- 3 tbsp coarse cracked black pepper
- 2 tbsp granulated garlic
- 1 tbsp smoked paprika
- 2 tsp ground coriander seed
The fire
- Lump charcoal
- 3 or 4 fist-sized chunks of hickory or oak
- A pan of water under the grate
How it goes
1 — Score the fat into a grid
Lay the butt fat-cap up and cut a crosshatch into it, about half an inch apart and just through the fat, not into the meat. This is the whole reason the finished bark breaks into tiles the way it does in the picture.
pro tip — If your knife is dragging, put the butt in the freezer for twenty minutes. Cold fat cuts clean.
2 — Mustard, then rub, then the fridge
Smear the whole thing with mustard — you will not taste it, it is glue. Mix the salt, pepper, garlic, paprika and coriander and put on far more than feels reasonable, working it into the cuts. Uncovered in the fridge overnight.
3 — Light a small fire
225°F to 250°F, water pan underneath, wood chunks buried in the coals rather than piled on top so the smoke comes thin and blue instead of white.
4 — Fat cap up, lid down, walk away
On the grate fat side up so it bastes itself the whole way down. Do not open the lid for four hours. Every look costs you fifteen minutes and gains you nothing.
5 — Ride out the stall
Somewhere around 160°F internal it stops climbing and sits there for two or three hours while moisture evaporates off the surface. This is normal, this is where the bark is made, and this is where everybody panics and wraps it.
pro tip — Do not wrap. Foil steams the bark soft, and a soft bark cannot tile. The stall ends on its own.
6 — Pull at 203°F, by feel not by number
Nine to eleven hours in, a probe should slide into the thickest part like it is going into warm butter. That feeling is the doneness, the thermometer is just a second opinion.
7 — Rest it an hour, loosely tented
Straight off the smoker the juice is all pushed to the middle. An hour on the counter under a loose tent of foil puts it back through the meat.
8 — Break it open, do not shred it
Find the seams with your hands and pull the thing apart in thick pieces, each one carrying its own piece of black. Slice what does not come away naturally. The bone should lift out clean.
Half of it goes on plates and the other half goes in a glass dish for the week. Fajitas on Tuesday. LFG.