How to Barbecue – Pulled Pork Barbecue

As we have mentioned in a previous article on the How of Barbecue, pork was the meat of choice for barbecue in the American South primarily because pigs could be allowed to run semi-wild until they were needed for a food source. Cattle and other animals were not able to be managed in this way, so economics more than anything else made the decision that pigs and hogs would dominate the barbecue scene.

Since these animals were not pampered like they are today, their meat was often stringy and tough and required some ingenuity and patience to make them appetizing. Slow, smoke cooking that often took more than 24 hours was the answer to this: it could transform the most inedible cuts of meat into mouthwatering delicacies. By using this slow smoking approach most of the fat and collagen would have melted away so that all that was left was the meat, which by that time was so tender that it could be literally “pulled” from the bones.

The delicious barbecue flavor is achieved by exposing the pork to smoke for at least six hours, using hickory, oak, walnut or cherry or apple woods for your fire. Unlike grilling, you should stay away from mesquite because it will likely add too strong of a smoke taste. If you’ll be using charcoal, add your preferred wood chips to get the desired flavor.

After cooking over a low heat for at least 6 hours, check with a meat thermometer until you have an internal temperature of between 180F and 190F degrees. At this temperature the meat will have cooked sufficiently for you to be able to pull the meat from the bones. Let it set for an hour or so until it is cool enough for you to begin pulling. Separate the meat from the bones and any other inedible parts and put it in a cooker on low heat to keep it warm.

Your barbecue will have all the flavor it requires from the smoking process itself. Many people like to add a sauce while the pork is in the pot, or simply serve it on the side for dipping. After you’ve gone to such lengths to cook your meal, it only seems appropriate to make a barbecue sauce from scratch rather than use store-bought.

The basic ingredients start with hot pepper sauce and vinegar, adding salt and pepper to taste. Since there are so many variations of sauces all particular to each person’s taste buds, experiment until you come up with the right combination of other ingredients for you. The most popular include some type of tomato-based product (ketchup or whole, sauce or paste tomatoes,) brown sugar, molasses, garlic, chili powder, and even mustard. This is one of the most appealing aspects of barbecue sauce: it bears the fingerprints of its maker in a very unique way.

We hope this gives you a taste of how to barbecue pulled pork and inspires you to fire up the barbecue and get started! Have fun smoking!

How to Barbecue

How to Barbecue – Thoughts from California



As the first hints of autumn sneak into the air this second week of August, I savor the thought that the barbecuing season here in California is far from over. Being a refugee from Pennsylvania and New York, as the new school year approached at the end of each summer, I always experienced a mild depression knowing that all of my favorite barbecued delicacies would follow the path of the grill off into the bowels of our home’s garage. Not until 7 or 8 months from then would I experience my dad’s special barbecue sauce, or sit lazily on the picnic bench in the backyard smelling the evening’s meal sizzling over the coals.


True, there are delights on the East Coast that aren’t part of life on the West Coast: there are just enough oak and maple trees here to remind me of the stunning beauty of “leaf season” on a crisp fall day back east; we go to Tahoe to experience “winter” for a few days at a time and then leave it in the rearview mirror of our car on the way back home; and it is very difficult to compete with the breathtaking sight of colorful blossoms exploding out of nowhere after a long, cold, grey winter. But…no barbecuing for over half a year? No thank you!


I learned many tricks about how to barbecue ribs and how to barbecue chicken over my last 20 years in suburban San Francisco. I learned how to work the grill to my advantage, to time the length of cooking by intuition as much as by the clock, and how to use our friends’ secret barbecue sauce recipes to make true grilled masterpieces. But one of the things I learned early and well was that I could cook on the grill virtually all year long! How incredible this still seems to me.


Sundays are often barbecue night. Our family is so busy in so many different directions that this is often the only evening we can all commit to sitting down and breaking bread together. As I start up the coals I can’t resist calling family or friends back home to check in and ultimately inform them that I can smell the ribs cooking, especially if there is a blizzard going on as we speak. It has become a ritual of sorts; I imagine some of them thinking as the first flakes fall that they are likely to hear from me sooner than later. It’s all in good fun, but it really is an expression of how grateful I feel to be able to indulge in this delicious preoccupation nearly any day that I like.


So, I’ll give up the leaves, and the snow, and the blossoms to have this hedonistic blessing be a daily part of my life. And I’ll keep on learning new tricks, and trying new methods of cooking, and be glad that I have such a perfect situation to keep learning how to barbecue. Happy grilling!