How To Make Pulled Pork On Big Green Egg In 11 Easy Steps

When you have the Big Green Egg, it’s a lot easier to start grilling. You don’t have to worry about keeping the fire going or keeping the temperature right. The Egg takes care of all of that for you, so you can focus on cooking.

Let’s talk about how to make the best smoked pulled pork from a pork butt.

When you think of BBQ, pork is probably the first thing that comes to mind. And when you think of pork, you can’t help but think of a tasty smoked butt.

This cut has been a favorite of pitmasters for years and years because it tastes great and is easy to cook once you get the hang of it.

At first glance, it might seem hard, but with these tips, smoking a perfect pork butt is as easy as pie.

What is pulled pork, then? 

Wikipedia calls it a way to cook pork in which a piece of meat that would normally be tough is cooked slowly at low temperatures. This makes the meat soft enough that it can be “pulled,” or easily broken into pieces. There are many different kinds of pulled pork all over the world.

Slow and low is by far my favorite thing to do. It’s easy to mess up and is a great way to start learning about BBQ.

This cut of meat is called a “Boston Butt,” and it has a velvety texture. This cut is strange because it comes from the top of the pig’s shoulder, not the back. There are a few ideas about why this cut is called what it is, but that’s a story for another time. Let’s start cooking this butt from the pig’s shoulder right away.

Pulling pork on your Big Green Egg is an easy thing to do. Let’s do this thing by thing.

What is Big Green Egg?

The Big Green Egg is America’s first ceramic barbecue for fans of outdoor cooking, having been introduced in 1974. Its design is based on Japanese clay cookers called kamados, and it has a thick layer of glazed ceramic to protect it from the weather and provide ideal cooking conditions for a variety of dishes.

There are seven different sizes available for the Big Green Egg: mini, minimax, small, medium, big, extra-large, and extra, extra huge. Each airtight ceramic Egg has a stainless steel cooking grid and is porcelain-glazed for great durability. A built-in thermometer offers accurate readings up to 750 degrees. To keep the temperature under control, adjust two vents, a flow draft door at the bottom, and a dual-function metal top.

After using my cheap grill a few times, I decided I wanted something better. I’d never heard of a Big Green Egg before, but I quickly became obsessed with them and started saving money to buy one. Since I’ve had my Big Green Egg for 10 years, pulled pork is still one of my favorite things to grill.

Read More: Grill in the Garage: Everything You Should Know

Pulled pork on a Big Green Egg – a step-by-step guide

When a Boston burger is cooking on the green egg, the smell takes me back to the deck of our first home. But you’re not here to hear about my old memories, so let’s get to work.

In addition to your egg, meat, and charcoal, you’ll need the following hardware:

• Half-pans made of disposable aluminum foil
• An instant-read thermometer
• A clean, dry cooler
• Gloves for handling hot meat
• A sharp knife

Step 1: Start with a good piece of meat

The first step to smoking a perfect Big Green Egg pork butt is choosing the right cut of meat from the shoulder area.

If you’re going to spend hours smoking pulled pork, make sure you start with good meat. This is why we chose the bone-in pork butt from Omaha Steaks. This cut comes from the shoulder area and has some fat marbling throughout the meat, which will make a juicy and flavorful pulled pork.

How is a pork butt different from a pork shoulder?

The pork butt is a cut from the hog’s shoulder that is lower than the pork shoulder. Because it has more fat, a pork butt is a better choice for pulled pork.

Check out this pork guide by Cooks Illustrated to learn more about these cuts.

The bone-in pork butt from Omaha Steaks comes from the shoulder area and has fat marbling all through the meat, which will make juicy, flavorful pulled pork. Omaha Steaks’ pork butt doesn’t have any extra solutions or additives; it’s just pure, high-quality meat. The butchers at Omaha Steaks carefully trim your pork roast, so you don’t have to do much.

You won’t have to cut off extra fat like you might have to do with a pork butt from the store. This bone-in roast makes the meat taste even better. Just put a rub on it and put it on the smoker.

Pulled pork goes great on the Boston Butt. It has a lot of fat between the muscles and a lot of connective tissue. The fat inside the meat helps to baste it and keep it moist while it cooks. During low and slow cooking, the connective tissue breaks down into gelatin. All this combines to give an amazing flavor and one of the most wonderful mouthfeels ever.

You can buy Boston Butts at most mega-marts, and they don’t cost much. Most of the ones in stores weigh between 6 and 10 lbs. They may also be called something else. Ask the butcher if you’re not sure.

Brine and sulfates are put into some butts. “Enhanced” is the word for this. This shot makes the meat last longer on the store shelf. The addition also helps the meat stay moist and keep its color. It doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Sulfates are always put into the pork butts of competition BBQ teams.

Most enhanced butts come from big companies that make a lot of them. Most of the time, they cost less than real butts. This is because the brine solution makes the meat heavier. They are also usually a bit slimmer and have less fat on the outside.

When you’re shopping for your butt, pay close attention to the label. I prefer natural pork butts, but I’ll happily cook enhanced pork butts if that’s all I can get. You can’t cook the wrong one.

Boston Butt is probably one of the easiest cuts of meat to cook. Because it is so big and has a lot of fat, it is almost impossible to overcook. I’ve probably smoked more than 100 of them, and only one of them wasn’t good. I also learned not to trust a built-in thermometer because 70 degrees off over 16 hours can make a big difference.

I look for butts that weigh about eight pounds. When they get much bigger, they tend to get tougher, and at that size, the timing usually works out well for me. They are often frozen and packed two into a package. Feel free to make two. It takes the same amount of work and pulled pork that is left over freezes well and can be used to make things like smoked nachos.

The natural-trimmed Boston Butts have a big, round cap on one side. This big hat has got to go. Make shallow cuts across the fat cap with a sharp knife until it’s gone.

Do you want to see the meat?

If you can’t see the meat, you can’t smell the smoke or taste the spices. I like to cut the butt and add seasonings the day before.

As an aside, you can keep this fat to make fresh breakfast sausage or turn it into low-quality lard if you want. The fat is easy to freeze.

Step 2: Prepare the meat for cooking

Getting Boston Butts out of the package is messy, so have hot water running and a lot of paper towels ready. When you open a cry-packed butt, it will probably smell like sulfur. Don’t worry, it’s just a normal smell from being locked up and doesn’t mean the meat is bad.

The most important part of the prep is making a great bark. Unless you brine your Boston butt, which I’ve never done but have always meant to, most of what you do will only flavor the outside. Most of the flavor comes from the pork butt’s fat and the smoke it will soak up over the next few days.

For pulled pork on the Big Green Egg, I usually use my pork rub recipe, but I’ve also made great smoked pork butt with just salt, pepper, garlic powder, and red pepper. The key is to make sure the outside is dry before you start barking.

Take the pork butt out of its package and dry it well with a paper towel. Put it on a pan or cookie sheet with a rim and generously cover it with pork rub. The best bark comes from rubbing your Boston butt and letting it sit in the fridge overnight.

Also Read:

• What Is The Best Blender To Puree Meat?
• Can Glass Pyrex Go in the Oven?

Step 3: Season your meat well on all sides

For a pork rub, we like to use a mixture of salt, brown sugar, and a little bit of heat. You could use your favorite pork rub, or you could make your own. The goal is to add flavor and keep the meat moist, so use a lot of seasoning.

Should you put the rub on your pork butt the night before you smoke it or the same day?

Many people argue about this.

Usually, when cooking beef, we say to let the rub sit on the meat overnight. For this pork butt, we didn’t “cure” it like a ham by leaving the rub on for a long time. Instead, we just put the rub on while we were setting up and heating up the Big Green Egg smoker.

Let’s take a moment to talk about some ways to spice up the butt.

One way is to buy a BBQ rub that is made for commercial use. You’re good to go after sprinkling that on. But I like to do things differently. I want to be able to change the taste more. I also want to be able to control how much salt I put on my meat better.

How about less salt? Why?

Well, if you can only put one thing on your meat, it should be salt. In the end, salt and fire make some really cool things. The rest is just a bonus.

If you’re using a ready-made rub, skip this step. You don’t want to salt the meat twice.

After the meat has been trimmed, I use 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon of Morton Course Kosher salt per pound of meat. If you are going to use table salt, cut that amount by 12. Due to the size of the salt crystals, a measure of table salt has more salt than a measure of kosher salt. 

After you put the salt on, add your spice mix. This could be anything you want. Most BBQ rubs have things like sugar, paprika, onion, garlic powder, cumin, and black pepper. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box. I try to avoid sugar and carbs, so I used 5-spice, onion powder, and black pepper to make the butt for this article.

There’s no bad way to grill. You should spread the spice rub all over the meat. Still, you don’t want to go overboard.

After the butt has been seasoned, put it in the fridge for the night by wrapping it in plastic wrap.

Step 5: Cook your pork

The Boston Butt is a large piece of meat. It will take a little while to cook.

It can be cooked at a lot of different temperatures. It will work well with the Big Green Egg at any temperature between 225°F and 275°F or higher. It’s possible to mess up, but it’s hard to do.

Put a lot of lump charcoal in your Big Green Egg and start a fire.

Put the probe of your thermometer in the thickest part of your pork butt. You don’t want to hit the bone. Put your Boston butt on the Big Green Egg. Don’t open your egg again until you’ve taken the meat off. On a Big Green Egg, you don’t need to baste or spray a pork butt. This piece of meat is already so fatty that there’s nothing you can do to make it juicier. All you’ll do is kill your bark and throw off the temperature in your smoker.

If you’ve never made a pork butt on the Big Green Egg before, you’re in for a treat. Be ready for your pork butt to cook at around 150-160 degrees. You’ll think you’ve gone crazy and might be tempted to turn up the heat. Let it be. This is the slow part of cooking on low heat for a long time.

When we talk about slow, Boston Butt on the Big Green Egg can sometimes be so slow that it drives you crazy. I usually plan on 2 hours per pound when cooking at 200 degrees. You shouldn’t try to time-pull pork on the Big Green Egg exactly, but as you’ll see below, that’s not a problem.

Step 6: Use a drip pan in your Big Green Egg

We put a disposable aluminum drip pan with about a third of an inch of water on top of the indirect cooking plate on the Conveggtor.

The main reason we did it this way was to keep our Big Green Egg clean, but it was also so that the pork shoulder fat wouldn’t drip and burn on the plate, which would ruin the flavor of the smoke.

Step 7: Put some chunks of wood on top of the lump 

We like to add some wood chunks to our Big Green Egg to add more smoke flavor. Applewood goes well with pork, so we put about four chunks of applewood on top of the charcoal.

Make sure to buy wood chunks instead of wood chips because a pork butt in a big green egg takes a long time to smoke, and the bigger the wood, the longer it takes to burn. You could choose an apple, cherry, or pecan. If you want something a little bit stronger, use hickory. Get some mesquite wood if you want the most smoke.

Before you light your Big Green Egg, soak the wood chunks in water for an hour. This will help the wood burn longer.

Remember that the type of wood is not that important in the grand scheme of things. You have the lump charcoal making smoke and all your spices going. You may or may not be adding a sauce to the pulled pork. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter much what kind of wood you use. If you want to use it, put two or three chunks on your bed of charcoal before you light it.

Egg temperatures are always easier to sneak up on. The ceramic in a Big Green Egg is good at keeping the heat in and acting like an oven, but it takes a long time to turn down the heat. Keep a close eye on the temperature as you start the egg, and make sure you start taking breaks early so you can get to the right temperature.

You want this to be low and slow. I like smoking pork butt at 200° and pulling it at 200° (I let it get up to 225° occasionally). It also slow-cooks the pork, even more, making it very soft. Make sure there are enough lumps in the egg. You shouldn’t have to add more lumps or open the egg until it’s time to pull the meat off. Remember that you can’t cook if you’re looking.

Fill your fire bowl with the lump you want to use, and start a fire in the small hole in the middle. Watch the temperature and start adding wood chunks when it reaches 175° to 180°. After adding the wood pieces, you add the plate setter (or however you set up your smoker for indirect cooking). Put your grate and thermometer probe on the grate.

Your grate has a thermometer probe, right?

I highly recommend a probe at the grate level, but if you don’t have one, you can still make a Big Green Egg pork butt. You’ll just have to keep an eye on the internal temperature of your meat and know your smoker.

When you first light your smoke wood, big clouds of thick white smoke will rise. You’ll want to get your meat right in the middle of it because it will smell good. Don’t. This smoke tastes bitter and won’t give you the taste you’re looking for. Wait until the temperature has stabilized and the smoke turns into thin blue wisps. You can tell that this smoke is different from the white smoke that was there before.

How much time will it take?

BBQ is a mix of many different things. We say that the meat is done when it’s done when we’re barbecuing. We cook based on how hot the meat is, not how long it has been in the Egg. This is true, but we also know that BBQ can be made ahead of time and served whenever it’s needed.

At 225°F, a Boston Butt takes about 1 12 to 2 hours per pound to cook. If your trimmed butt is 7 pounds, it will take 14 hours (+/-30%) to cook. We can cut down on the cooking time by wrapping the butt in aluminum foil while it’s cooking. This is what we do when the butt gets to the “stall.”

During the stall, the meat’s moisture rises to the surface and evaporates, similar to how a person sweats when it’s hot outside. This is a natural way to cool down. Large cuts of meat, like a Boston Butt, can be cooled by evaporation.

The internal temperature will rise quickly in the first few hours of cooking. Once the internal temperature reaches about 150°F, the butt will stop moving. The temperature will stay around 150° for a long time. It might even go down a little. If there is moisture in the meat that can evaporate, it will sit in a stall. Don’t change how hot or cold the Egg is! Let it be.

Step 8: Use “Turbo-butt” mode to speed up cooking without sacrificing quality

Most of the time, smoking meat takes a lot of work and time. We smoked the pork butt from Omaha Steaks at 250° F until the temperature inside reached 165° F.

At that point, the outside of the meat had a good bark, so we wrapped the pork butt from Omaha Steaks in tin foil and opened the vents on the Big Green Egg to raise the temperature to 350° F.

This makes it easier to eat the pulled pork faster without giving up taste or moisture.

Step 9: Wrap the meat and let it rest

We’re going to wrap up for today’s cook. We’re going to leave the butt in the stall for a long time without wrapping it. When the cook has been going for about seven hours, take the meat off the Egg and wrap it tightly in aluminum foil.

Don’t do this in a hurry. Take your time and wrap the meat tightly in the foil. Even a small space between the meat and the foil will let the meat continue to sweat. Put it on well, and then add a second layer to make sure it’s covered. Again, don’t rush. You still have time to fix this.

Then wrap it in a big towel (don’t use your best towels) and put it in an empty cooler. Rest your butt for at least an hour, but you can leave it like this for a few hours. Because of this, you should always plan to cook your pork butt early. It is much better to let it sit for three or four hours in a cooler than to try to finish it while everyone stands around the kitchen and looks at you.

Every Boston bock is different, and you’ll be surprised by how some seem to cook quickly while others take a long time.

Don’t take off the foil. If you can’t fit an aluminum foil pan in your cooler, put some paper towels in it first. This thing will leak some liquid, and this will help clean it up. Put the lid on that cooler and let the Butt sit in there for at least 30 minutes. If you need to, you can leave it there for a few hours. It will stay safe for a very long time at a safe temperature.

Step 10: Pull the pork 

If you plan to have the Boston Butt ready 1 to 1 1/2 hours before dinner, it will be hot and ready to pull out of the cooler when dinner time comes. When that time comes, put the butt in a foil pan and start pulling.

There are several ways to do this. Even if the meat has been in a cooler for a few hours, I don’t think it’s a good idea to use your fingers to pick it up. First, put your meat on something that will keep the juices from running all over your counter. For this part, we usually put a cutting board on a cookie sheet with a rim.

Take out the bone, which should come out easily, and then start shredding the pork. You can do this with a fork, and I have a set of plastic bear claws that work great. I really like it when the inside of my pulled pork is on the outside. You get both the soft meat inside the smoked pork butt and the crunchy, seasoned skin.

I find it easy to both shred the meat and mix in the bark with the bear claws.

Step 11: It’s time to eat

I’d say now comes the fun part, but the truth is, as much as I love good barbecue, even more, I like making it. But eating them comes very close. On cheap hamburger buns, we like to put pulled pork from the Big Green Egg.

Both homemade BBQ sauce and commercial white BBQ sauce go well with the buns. This pulled pork doesn’t really need a sauce, but sometimes I like a mix of white and red sauce on it. A good slice of cornbread is also a great choice.

Ways to use pulled pork

You can put pulled pork on a lot of different foods, from sandwiches to pizza. Pulled pork is cheap, can be frozen and used later, and is always a big hit with family and friends. If you take the time to use your Big Green Egg and a couple of Boston Butts, you will be well on your way to making a BBQ that is better than you could have ever imagined.

Furthermore, pulled pork can be used in so many different ways:

• For BBQ pulled pork sliders, add BBQ sauce and put the meat on rolls with pickles.
• Pull the pork apart and put it on a tortilla to make pulled pork tacos.
• Put pulled pork that you have left over in a baked potato to make a loaded spud.
• For the best nacho recipe, we also like to put pulled pork on tortilla chips.

Frequently asked questions

Conclusion

A Big Green Egg is a way to cook with a kamado. The kamado is a traditional Japanese oven that was used in the home.

When using this kind of grill, you need to be patient and take your time.

We find that the best way to cook this type of cut is at a low temperature of 250°F. If you want pulled pork, you need to cook your pork butt until it reaches a certain internal temperature, not for a certain amount of time.

The goal is for the meat to reach an internal temperature of 203°F and feel soft when poked with a thermometer probe.

These tips will help you make the tastiest and most juicy pulled pork on your Big Green Egg.