How Long To Smoke A Pork Butt For The Most Tender Meat

Learning how to smoke a pork butt — balancing how long and at what temperature — is often the first step toward becoming a confident barbecue master. That's because it is one of the most forgiving cuts of meat you can smoke. Despite the name, pork butt comes from the shoulder of the pig and is one of the area's two smaller cuts, along with the picnic shoulder. It is considered the go-to choice for pulled pork because it is well marbled with fat, which makes it incredibly juicy and flavorful when the meat has been cooked long enough to break down all the collagen. And having all that juicy fat means you are at less of a risk of overcooking it. It's also great for beginners because it will teach you patience, as a pork butt needs about one and a half to two hours per pound to get perfectly tender.

We say "about" because that number can rise or go down depending on the smoking temperature. The most common recommended temperature for low-and-slow smoked pork butt is 225 degrees Fahrenheit. The goal is to slowly bring the pork shoulder up to an internal temperature of around 200 degrees, and cooking it at 225 degrees helps you reach that target without overshooting it. This is the target temperature because collagen starts to melt into rich gelatin between 160 and 180 degrees, but the pork butt also needs to spend plenty of time in and above that temperature range for the collagen to fully break down and make the meat pull apart tender.

Despite the precision of these temperatures, smoking is not always a precise art. The time it takes your pork butt to come up to 200 is going to vary based on both the size and thickness of the cut, and even other factors like the weather. Thinner pork butts could need as little as an hour and 15 minutes per pound, while the thicker ones will need two hours.

Most pork butts are between 5 and 8 pounds, so this would mean anywhere from eight to 16 hours of smoking, depending on these different variables. This is another way of saying: invest in a good digital meat thermometer. It's one of the most important smoking tools you'll have, and even with these timelines, it's the only way to know for sure your pork butt is in the sweet spot when you pull it off the heat.

There are a few things you can do to speed this process up without compromising your pork. Turning up the temperature isn't too risky, because of all that fat, and smoking at 250 to 275 degrees Fahrenheit can cut several hours off the cook time. Just make sure you keep the cooking temperature below 300 degrees, because that is the point the meat can start to dry out. You can also utilize a brisket trick known as the "Texas crutch," where you wrap the pork butt in foil halfway through the cooking process, which helps stop heat loss through evaporation and can cut a few hours off your smoking time as well. But no matter how you smoke your pork butt, be prepared to put aside plenty of time.