How to Smoke a Pork Butt (Easy Pulled Pork)

Lay your bone-in pork butt on a cutting board and grab a sharp boning knife. Cut off anything hanging or sticking up that would just burn during a long cook. Then work on the big fat cap on the back - shave most of it down flat so you expose the meat underneath.

You don't have to get every bit of fat off. The point is to trim enough that your rub sits on actual meat instead of a thick layer of fat that renders into nothing. Keep an eye out for the money muscle near the top - that's the best bite on the whole thing.

Squeeze a good amount of plain yellow mustard over the trimmed pork butt and spread it around with your hand until every side is coated. This is your binder. It gives the rub something to grip so the seasoning actually sticks instead of falling off.

Don't worry about the mustard flavor - it cooks off completely over ten hours and you won't taste it in the finished pork. If you'd rather skip it, a light coat of olive oil works too, or you can go with nothing and just give the rub extra time to sweat in.

Now coat the whole butt heavily with an all-purpose barbecue rub. Go liberal here - this is a big piece of meat and you're only seasoning the outside, so a light dusting won't cut it. Turn it and hit every side, top, bottom, and the ends.

Pick a rub that matches the flavor you want. A sweet, paprika-heavy rub gives you that classic Southern pulled pork profile with deep red color. Whatever you choose, this is the step that decides how the finished pork tastes, so use something you love.

Fire up your smoker and get it running a clean fire around 275F. You want thin blue smoke, not thick white smoke - that heavy white smoke leaves a bitter taste. Add a water pan with apple juice or plain water to keep some moisture in the cooker.

Set the seasoned butts on the grate and add your wood. Hickory gives you a bold, classic Southern smoke, while pecan or cherry run a little milder. Close the lid and settle in - depending on the size of your butt, this is an 8 to 10 hour cook.

Around the two-hour mark, and again a couple hours after that, give the pork a spritz. Fill a spray bottle with apple cider vinegar and mist the surface with a nice fine spray until the outside looks wet again.

Spritzing is optional, but it keeps the surface from drying out and helps the bark build slowly instead of hardening too fast. This is also a good time to rotate the butts if your cooker has a hot side, so both cook evenly.

After about six hours, when the bark has turned a deep mahogany and taken on plenty of smoke, it's time to wrap. Lay out a big sheet of foil or butcher paper. Wrapping speeds up the back half of the cook and pushes you through the stall where the temperature stalls out.

For extra flavor, add a few pats of butter, a sprinkle of brown sugar for sweetness, and a dusting of a hotter rub before you seal it. Wrap it tight so the juices stay in, then put it back on the smoker at the same 275F.

Ride it out until the pork is probe-tender. Around the nine-hour mark, slide an instant-read thermometer into a couple of different spots in the thickest muscles. You're looking for a reading just past 200F, usually 201F to 203F.

The number matters less than the feel. When the probe slides in with no resistance at all - like poking a toothpick into a cake - it's done. Check a few spots to be sure, since one muscle can lag behind another.

Pull the butts off and let them rest before you touch them. Resting lets the juices redistribute so nothing runs out the second you open the foil. If you saved the drippings, pour them into a fat separator and set the good juice aside.

Now pull it apart. A clean bone that slides right out tells you it's cooked perfectly. Shred the meat with your hands or a set of meat claws, keep some of that dark bark mixed in, and dredge the pieces back through the reserved juice. Pile it on a bun and dig in.