Learn how to cook a Boston butt on a Pit Boss grill. Cooking a Boston butt can be a complicated process, especially if you’ve never cooked one. How long does it take? What do I season it with? Well, we cooked our first ever one on our Pit Boss pellet grill and shared our experience step-by-step.
How to Cook A Boston Butt on a Pit Boss?
Prep the Boston butt and season it with your favorite seasoning. Preheat the grill to a low temperature, ensure it has enough pellets, insert the thermometer, and let the smoker do most of the work!
Once the meats on the grill, you can do other things. Just make sure you stay close to the grill as you never want to leave it unattended. Plus, the cooking process is broken into several methods to ensure the butt comes out nice and juicy.
How Long Does It Take to Cook A Boston Butt On A Pellet Grill?
Here’s the step-by-step process I used to cook the grill on my Pit Boss.
Prepping The Boston Butt
A day before you plan on cooking the Boston butt, I’d recommend seasoning the meat. We used a big Jumbo Hefty Storage ziplock bag and put the Boston butt inside with the seasoning.
All we did was rub the entire pork butt with some Famous Dave’s Rib which you can pick up at Walmart or any of your local grocery stores.
Best Pellets To Use In The Pit Boss
Pit Boss pellet grills come in several different flavors. We had last cooked hamburgers and had Competition pellets left in the auger, so we used those. However, during the cook, we added some apple pellets thinking that it would help flavor the meat.
The truth is that we should’ve just stuck with using the competition blend because the Boston butt was already seasoned and I don’t think that the apple blend helped season it anymore. Although, I could be wrong?
Next time we cook another Boston butt, we’ll have to change out the pellets and just use the competition blend. We noticed that the Pit Boss burned through a lot of the pellets during the cook, so make sure you have plenty before you smoke a Boston butt.
Cooking A Boston Butt With A Pit Boss Electric Smoker
Time and Temperature
As mentioned above, the times will vary depending on the size of your Boston Butt. We set the temperature at on the Pit Boss to 225℉ for the first 3 hours, and then we bumped it up to 250℉ for a total of 6.5 hours.
Whatever you do, you don’t want to rush the cooking process. That will cause the meat to come out tough. The slow cooking process makes the meat so moist that it just falls off the bone when you get ready to pull it apart.
Pre Heating The Pit Boss
Preheat the Pit Boss to 225℉ and spray the grill with a non-stick spray. (I forgot to do that, but luckily it didn’t stick too bad. While the grill is heating up, take the butt out of the jumbo plastic bag that it’s been seasoning in.
Once the grill is has heated to the proper temperature, put the it on the grill. I chose to put it fat side up.
Cooking Process Part One
The cooking process is broken into two parts. At least, that’s how it was based on the recipe we followed. Below are the exact steps we used to cook a Boston Butt on our Pit Boss grill.
Get The Apple Juice Ready
Place a small aluminum foil pan filled with apple juice inside the smoker.
One of the things we were told was to spray the butt with apple juice every hour to keep it moist. So we picked up some of the cheapest apple juice we could find at Walmart and filled a small sprayer.
Remember to spray the meat every hour to keep it from getting dry. We also filled a small aluminum pan with some apple juice to help keep the meat moist in the smoker. I’m honestly not sure how much this helped, but our meat was so moist that it fell off the bone.
Fat Side Up or Down?
I wasn’t sure how to place the pork butt on the grill, and based on all the videos, I still couldn’t tell. So, in the end, I just went with the fat side up.
Don’t Forget The Meat Thermometer
Before you close the lid, make sure you stick the thermometer probe into the thickest part of the meat without touching the bone. Then plug the other end into the Pit Boss, and that’s it. We’ve put together a list of some of the best meat thermometers if you don’t have one.
To check the temperature, all you do is look at the Pit Boss and it will tell you what it is without having to open the top of the smoker.
You’ll want to leave the meat on the smoker for 3 hours for the first part of the cooking process.
Cooking Process – Part Two
Once the three hours are done, open up the Pit Boss top and carefully remove the Boston Butt.
Wrap The Boston Butt In Aluminum Foil
Put the pork butt into an aluminum foil pan and cover with aluminum foil. Before covering it with foil, we added about a cup of apple juice to the bottom of the pan to help keep it moist.
Put it back onto the grill and turn the temperature up to 250℉ for the remainder of the cooking time. You can remove the foil pan with the apple juice since the butt is covered with aluminum foil.
Cook Another 5 Hours On The Pit Boss
At this point, you can just let the Pit Boss do its job, just make sure that it has enough pellets. We actually took this time to go for a walk while the pork butt just cooked.
How Do You Know When The Boston Butt Is Done?
This is how it looks when it’s cooked fat side up.
The recipe we followed didn’t want us to remove the pork butt until the internal temperature reached 204℉. Ours actually reached 210℉ before we took it off, but you can remove it when it reaches an internal temperature of 190 degrees.
We used both the temperature probe and then used a handheld thermometer to ensure that the meat was actually cooked thoroughly.
Let The Boston Butt Rest
Remove the pork butt from the smoker and let it rest in the foil for up to an hour before you start pulling. The resting process allows the meat to relax, which makes it juicer and more flavorful.
We set a timer on the stove, so we didn’t rush the cooling process. Here’s how long you should let Boston butt rest and why it’s a step you shouldn’t overlook.
Conclusion
Hopefully, our step-by-step process will show you how easy it is to cook a Boston butt on the Pit Boss grill. This process works pretty much the same for any pellet grill you have.
Now that the weather is warming up, it’s time to pull out your pellet grill and cook one for you and your family!