How to Grill Pulled Pork
Pulled Pork is a Southern United States favorite food to make enjoyed year round, especially during the BBQ and cookout season. Although it is not difficult to make on a gas grill, it can be challenging, especially for beginners. You don’t need to be an award winning chef to make fantastic pulled pork, mostly you only need patience and preparation. In most cases you simply need to remember the phrase “slow and low” – you want to cook it for a long time at a lower temperature.
The first thing to do is to carefully select which pork cut is best suited for your needs. Pulled pork sandwiches were created in order to use up the shoulder cut of the meat because it is typically tougher than other cuts. To this day, pork shoulder roast is still the most common cut most people use for making the dish. If you are not concerned about budget or price, you could instead opt to make pulled pork using pork tenderloin, which is on its own naturally more tender than the shoulder roast.
When it comes to choosing the best pulled pork recipe, most of it is all a matter of personal preference and which seasonings are used to marinate the meat. You can either buy a pre-made rub available in grocery stores and online, or you can create your own using common spices and seasonings you have in your kitchen cupboard. Rubbing the seasonings into the meat will help flavor it while you let it sit in the fridge over night marinating. There can be a little controversy sometimes as to how long meat should marinade, but for most people eight hours is a good minimum, and anything more than a day is probably not going to make a noticeable difference, except maybe make you hungrier and more anxious to eat it.
After the pork is nice and marinated, you’re ready to start cooking it on the gas grill. Smokers and grills with charcoal may be popular, but it can be tough to keep them going long enough to stay at the right temperature. Since you have total control of how much heat a gas grill has it is definitely much easier for beginners. Now there are some important tips for cooking on a gas grill to know in order to make sure you get the best results.
Since pulled pork requires an extended cooking time to become tender, you will need to grill it differently than what you would do for grilling things such as chicken or shrimp. Unlike most grilling recipes where you directly grill the food directly above the burner, for slow cooking items it is best to set up your grill to cook with indirect heat so the meat will be nice and tender. It is pretty easy to set up your grill so you can cook with indirect heat. All you need to do is place a pan of water on the bottom grate of the grill and cooking the meat directly over the pan of water. After you have set up the grill properly, you’re ready to start cooking! You’ll want to use a low indirect heat, and for most this means setting the temperature to stay steady in the 200-225 degrees range. It takes a lot of patience – you’ll likely be waiting anywhere from 6 to 8 hours for it to be done. You’ll know the pork is done when you can gently scrape it with a fork and the meat pulls apart easily.
Pulling the pork should be effortless – a couple of forks should be all that you need. Then you can decide to cover it in your favorite barbecue sauce and let it cook for another 10-15 minutes, stirring it and checking to make sure the sauce is still evenly coating it and not drying up. While there’s not set rule on how to serve the meat once it is done, many people love eating it on toasted sandwich rolls.
Making pulled pork doesn’t require a lot of culinary skills, mostly you just need a lot of patience to make a great dish for your friends and family to enjoy. Most importantly, have fun cooking your pulled pork!
