5 Hour Hickory Smoked Pulled Pork Butts

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I don’t always have the time (16-20 hours) and luxury to use my Low-and-Slow perfected recipes for Hickory Smoked Pulled Pork so I used a 5 hour turbo recipe to speed up the process.  Some would say it’s sacrilegious but the scrumptious results speak for themselves.

Picked up 2 Boneless Pork Butts weighing a total of 19.6 lbs @$1.55/lb for $30.38 at Cash & Carry.  Not a bad price for boneless.  Cut each in half and trimmed some of the excess fat.  No need to leave more than ¼ inch or so since I believe it hampers the bark formation.

Rubbed the 5 lb Pork Butts with Annie’s Roasted Garlic Extra Virgin Olive Oil for the glue and Plowboys BBQ Bovine Bold.  Wrapped the seasoned butts with Hot Cooking Bands made of high temp silicone to keep the boneless pork butts secure while cooking.

Wrapped 2 of them with plastic wrap and refrigerated overnight.  Vacuum sealed the other 2 and into the freezer for future use.

Took the Pork Butts out of the fridge for half an hour while the MAK 2 Star Wood Pellet Smoker-Grill was preheating to 225ºF with Hickory wood BBQ pellets.

Smoked the butts for 2¼ hours at 230ºF with Hickory.  Note the use of the cooking bands to keep the boneless butts in one piece.  The Pork Butts started at an Internal Temperature (IT) of 42ºF and were at 100ºF at this stage.

Bumped the MAK 2 Star temperature to 375ºF until the IT reached 160ºF.  Took 1½ hours to go from 100º to 160º.  At this point let me stress the importance of relying on Internal Temperature when cooking everything.  I only give times for planning purposes.

Removed the Pork Butts and double wrapped them with heavy duty foil before returning them to the 375ºF MAK 2 Star.

Keep the temperature probes in place in order to easily monitor the IT of the Pork Butts.  Pull the Pork Butts when the IT reaches 200º – 205ºF.

Pulled the Pork Butts when the IT reached 204ºF.  Started Pork Butts at 7:30am, removed them at 12:30 pm (5 hours).  Since they were double wrapped in foil it made it easy to remove the probes, seal the Foil, wrap them in a Towel, and into the Cooler (FTC) for 4 hours.

After a 4 hour FTC the Pork Butt was still too hot to handle.  Here you can see the great bark formation and juices to be used to mix back into the pulled pork.  You’ll also note that the reusable cooking bands were none the worse for wear and they’re dishwasher safe.  At this stage a total time of 9 hours has transpired versus the traditional 16 to 24 hours.

Here’s one of the two Pulled Pork Butts.  Note the bark formation and smoke ring.

Here are both Pork Butts pulled and ready for consumption.

The Money $Shot$… Hickory Smoked Turbo Pulled Pork with a side of Cole Slaw and fresh homemade Pinto Beans …

Leftovers … 5 1½ lb bags vacuum sealed and into the freezer for great future grub …

The results were comparable to Pork Butts that normally take ~ 20+ hours except I didn’t lose any sleep.  In my old age, I need all the beauty rest I can get!  You can see from the photos that there was a nice bark on the butts after the 4 hour FTC and an ample amount of juices to mix back into the pulled pork.  There was also a nice smoke ring.  Overall it was just as good.  It’s actually hard around here for me to find bone-in butts.  Don’t know why.  I also don’t think it makes much of a difference if you have the bone-in or boneless.

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