Pulled pork is a way of preparing pork.
It is made from a bone-in pork shoulder cut such as pork butt.
You cook the joint of pork very slowly with a dry rub on it in a barbeque pit or a smoker. (Some people marinate the meat overnight first.) Not everyone does a dry rub; some people just use salt and pepper.
The outside crust will be a little crunchy; inside, the meat will be moist and juicy. When done, you let the meat rest for half an hour, then pull it apart into shreds using two forks. This is where the name “pulled” comes from — though sometimes people just chop it instead.
When the pork has been shredded, it is then mixed with a barbeque sauce (“finishing” sauce.) It is then served on plain, fresh cheap hamburger buns, untoasted. The idea is that the bun should soak up all the sauce like a sponge. It is often topped with a vinegar-based coleslaw with no mayonnaise.
Pulled pork is served at “barbecue” restaurants throughout the American south. It is often served with potato salad, baked beans, pickles, potato chips, hush puppies, cooked greens, more coleslaw, and iced tea, followed up by dessert of banana pudding, peach cobblers, etc.
Sometimes the term “Pulled Pork” is also used to refer to the meat that has just been pulled off a whole barbequed pig, particularly in eastern North Carolina. In western North Carolina, it’s more likely to be pork butt specifically.
In the absence of a barbeque, those unfortunate souls living outside the great barbeque states of the American union will just bake their pork butt in an oven or crockpot instead. Southerners say this isn’t Pulled Pork at all, because the cooking method was all wrong. It is probably best to not ask them about any microwave versions which have now emerged.
However you do cook the joint you will be using for Pulled Pork, plan for many, many hours of cooking. The meat needs to be done to the point where it is almost falling off the bone all by itself. Pork Butt is fatty enough to allow this without the meat going dry.
