Eastern Carolina Pork BBQ

This is a recipe for cooking Eastern Carolina (Vinegar) Pork BBQ. While it is best on a smoker, you can do a pretty good job in the oven.

Serves 8-12 (Possibly more)

Ingredients

1 Pork Butt/Pork Shoulder

BBQ Rub

1/4 Cup Eastern Carolina Vinegar BBQ Sauce

Special Equipment

Smoker (Optional)

Fan (Optional with smoker, not used with oven)

Serving

Hawaiian or Potato Rolls

BBQ Sauce(s)

The Pork Butt/Shoulder is a pretty cheap cut, so it should be easy to come by.

The BBQ rub you will want a lot of. You want to get a pretty thick coating on the pork butt, and then 2 tablespoons more later. Find one you like, and you can always try mine. If you are using a store bought bbq rub, I highly suggest mixing in some Smoked Paprika with it, if it doesn't already have some, especially if you are cooking in the oven. You can get a lot of smokey flavor into the pork with this even without a smoker.

If you don't have some vinegar sauce handy, just use apple cider vinegar and toss in some salt and sugar with it. You can also see my recipe for this.

I'm not sure a lot of other recipes does what I do. I've seen a lot who either just basically braise it forever in vinegar sauce (which makes it too soft in my mind), or just adds bbq sauce on at the end. I like mine because while the meat is tender it still has some toothiness to it, unlike the braised versions, but also has a better vinegar infusion than just dumping vinegar sauce on at the end.

On brining: I've not had great luck with brining ahead of time instead of rubbing. That being said, I'm sure I haven't hit on the right brine. Also, it adds 3 days to the prep time.

On Wrapping: I do not wrap my pork. I find it unnecessary because most of the cuts I end up buying have a decent amount of fat on one side.

Note: While this is not a difficult recipe, it takes about 12-24 hours of prep and 24 hours of cooking so be prepared. However, you can prepare it a day or two in advance, and finish it only an hour or two ahead

Instructions

Make sure your pork butt is defrosted. This can take a while.

1. The day ahead, place your butt on a baking rack over an aluminum tray. Pat all the sides dry with a paper towel.

2. Liberally coat your pork butt with the BBQ rub. I use at least a quarter cup of it usually. You want as thick a coating you can get without it just sliding off. As you coat it, pat the rub into the meat (You don't want to actually rub it, just push down on it)

3. Place in your fridge overnight.

4. About 2 hours before you start cooking, take the butt out of the fridge. This next part will do nothing if you are cooking it in the oven. However, still pull it out.

   1. If you are smoking it, you can place the pork butt in front of a fan. This develops an external coating called a pellicle. This absorbs smoke flavor better. This also could be complete hogwash, but I do it it! I also know that this starts to develop overnight in the fridge, but the moving air helps it develop faster.

5. Preheat your smoker or oven to 225F.

   1. If you are cooking on the smoker, just go ahead and put your pork on the smoker skin (fat) side up.

   2. If you are cooking in the oven, place your pork butt in the oven in a roasting pan raised up off the bottom. Then place in the oven

6. Cook until the inside temperature hits at least 205F. Its a slow process, and takes anywhere from 18 to 20 hours for me. If you are using a cheap smoker that you can't maintain for that long, after about 4 hours you can move the pork to an oven and not miss much of the smoke flavor. I read somewhere that internal temp of 170F means it won't take in anymore smoke flavor. That being said I personally like to smoke it the whole time. However, when I had a cheap electric smoker, it couldn't maintain temperature that long, so I usually had to finish in the oven.

7. Take out of your heat source. Wrap in heavy duty aluminum foil, and if you can either cover in a towel or place in a cooler. Let it rest like this for 1-2 hours.

8. In a big baking tray (I like disposable lasagna trays), start pulling your pork with tongs, or forks, or whatever else you find effective. Pull it apart as thoroughly as you like.

9. Once pulled to your liking, Mix in 2 table spoons of BBQ rub and the 1/4 cup of BBQ sauce. Then tightly wrap the top with aluminum foil. If you are making it ahead of time, here is where you want to stop until a few hours before you need to serve. Just refrigerate if you are waiting to cook it.

10. Heat your oven back to 225F. Place your aluminum wrapped tray of meat into the oven and cook for 2 hours. You might want to add 30 minutes if you refrigerated overnight or longer.

Serving

I like to supply my Cheerwine sauce and Eastern Carolina Vinegar sauces to anyone having my BBQ. I let them decide how much they want. Personally, my favorite is either on a potato or Hawaiian roll, or just off a plate, and with my Cheerwine Sauce.

Reheating

This freezes and reheats surprisingly well. Just portion of your meat into air tight containers and freeze it. When you are ready, defrost, then toss the meat onto a piece of heavy duty aluminum foil, pour on some BBQ sauce, tightly wrap, and cook in the oven for about 30 minutes at 300F.