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NW Iowa | So my early Christmas present this year from my wife was a Traeger smoker/grill. We bought a 'Lil Tex at a local auto parts store on black Friday for a pretty good deal based on recommendations from my wife's brother.
I'm in charge of smoking some pulled pork for a family event we have coming up next weekend and I haven't done so well on smoking anything on it yet. I've just grilled burgers on it a few times and those have turned out good (pretty easy), but I've tried a beef roast and a pork loin (both about 3 lbs.) and neither have turned out very good. I was hoping to be able to "pull" them, but they were very tough and dried out. Ended up just slicing them and eating it with a bunch of bbq sauce. Had good flavor from the smoking, but it sure wasn't very tender and moist.
From reading some past posts here and from google, it sounds like I didn't get them hot enough? The pork roast I took off around 145 and beef roast about 160. I don't see how getting it to 190-200 as the recipes call will add the tenderness/moisture back into the meat once it's dried out. Is this the trick? Plus, the beef roast recipe I was using said it shouldn't take more than 4-5 hours total of cooking to get it done after the smoking, and it had been over 4 hours and was only at 160. I had smoked both for a few hours at "smoke" setting on the Traeger, then turned up the heat to 225 or so to finish them. Do I need to finish them at a higher heat setting?
Anybody have any ideas/recommendations? What about using the right cuts of meat for pulled pork? I was hoping to be able to get by with a pork loin I've got, but am I killing myself if I want to get good pulled pork? From reading, I should probably get a pork butt. Thanks for any help from a wanna be bbq grill master! | |
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Smoked pulled pork on Traeger recipes/suggestions?
