Pork butts are a little bland

[lcdearman]

I've done several pork butt smokes now and the meat always tastes bland. It is juicy, with good bark, but I have to add more rub and salt to the finished product to make it stand on its own. Sauce helps, but IMHO good BBQ does not need sauce. I have tried brining and injecting and I've used different rubs. I've tried leaving the fat cap/false cap and removing as much fat as possible to get the rub directly on the meat. I've varied the amount and types of wood with hickory, cherry, and maple, and I always get charcoal. Don't get me wrong, it ends up great, but I feel like I am cheating when I doctor the pork after it is pulled. Am I just expecting too much? Do others add rub/salt the pulled meat?

Thanks for any input, it is all appreciated!
Clay

 

[old sarge]

I've always gotten great results from the smoked butts.  I don't brine, or use sauce but some folks eating the pulled pork will add some bbq sauce after plating.  In preparing to serve, I just make sure that the bark is well mixed in with the rest of the pork so all the smoky goodness is well distributed.  And I will say that it has a much different flavor than that from ribs, or an oven roast pork roast.  All different, all good.

 

[barelfly]

I will add some rub to the pulled meat, just for a bit of added flavor. I do not add sauce to the serving dish, although I will have sauce available to add. I do like a vinegar style sauce on pork butt though.

But, if you are wanting more flavor, you could cut the butt in half so you get a bit more surface area for rub/bark that will mix in. Just another way to go about it.

Hope that helps!

 

[LarryD]

I just rub it pretty good with my favorite blend (salt, onion powder, garlic powder, pepper) and smoke it...  always comes out very flavorful.

Tell us about your process and maybe we can spot something for you to try there.

 

[lcdearman]

Thanks for the input. These last butts followed this process:

• Smoked 2 Tyson 6.5 lb boneless pork butts. I do not normally get boneless, but that was all the store had and they were not labeled as boneless so I didn't realize it until I started prepping
• Trimmed off excess fat (I don't always do this, just thought I might get more usable bark)
• Rubbed with yellow mustard
• Pork butt rub from the Lazy-Q-Guide (shown below) applied liberally, including any crevices
• Wrapped tightly in saran wrap
• Refrigerated for 10 hours (normally this would be overnight, but I had a time schedule to meet)
• Injected with Super Dave's pork injection from this site (shown below)
• Smoked in my #2 analog at 235* with 8.7 oz of cherry to internal temp of 195* on the lower one, 204* on the upper one
• All wood was charcoal at the end of the cook
• Total cook time was 12 hours and 15 minutes
• Wrapped tightly in foil and rested in an ice chest for 2 hours. They were still too hot to pull when I removed them

The meat was very moist with a wonderful texture, just not real flavorful. Maybe my problem is that I am just used to brisket?

  Pork Butt Rub
      1 cup brown sugar
      ¼ cup kosher salt
      ⅓ cup paprika
      2 tbsp garlic powder
      2 tbsp onion powder
      1 tbsp cayenne
      1 tbsp cumin
      1 tbsp coriander
      1 tbsp coarse black pepper

  Super Dave’s Pork Injection
      1 cup apple juice
      1/4 cup apple cider
      1/2 cup sugar
      2 tablespoons kosher salt
      2 tablespoons Worcestershire
      1 tablespoon rub
      1 teaspoon garlic powder

      Simmer to dissolve, cool before injecting. Use ½ oz per pound of meat.

 

[Ken]

You cooked the pig to two temperatures, 195 and 204.  How were they different?

 

[lcdearman]

Good question. I cooked these for a neighbor, so other than sampling them, I didn’t eat much of them.

I recently cooked two larger pork butts, pretty much the same process, and I did not find them to be bland at all. I removed the fat cap on one and scored the fat on the other. The butt with the scored fat cap was juicier for sure. I think the fat cap prevents the meat from drying out. The bark turned out hard and chewy, especially on the upper one, so a lot of it was discarded from the final pulled/chopped product.

Maybe the issue is that I am discarding too much bark, and that is where a lot of the flavor is. Now to figure out why the bark is so chewy...

 

[Lonzinomaker]

I always mix some apple juice concentrate and Memphis Dust rub into my pork butts after pulling them. Sometimes it takes just a little and other times almost the whole can of juice to get it to where I like it.