Tender pulled pork that melts in your mouth.

The Boston butt pork roast is an inexpensive cut of meat, when cooked really long over a slow heat produces extraordinary results — making it a great favorite for outdoor smoking aficionados. You can producing amazing results straight from the oven as well.

Served with your favorite sauce — this could be a great barbecue sauce, a ginger-scallion sauce (recipe below), a Korean ssam sauce — or an entire selection of sauces so that your family and friends can choose whichever they like best. Another idea: served pulled pork soft tacos with a fresh mango salsa. Frankly, this is so good, you can serve it anyway that floats your boat, and it will be to die for.

The Boston Butt pork roast, as its commonly known in the United States, comes from the upper blade shoulder of the pig’s front leg — not the hindquarters as the name might lead you to think.

Why is it Called a Boston Butt?

Before the Revolutionary War, butchers in the northeast commonly packed pork hams and shoulders into barrels for storage and transport. These barrels were called butts, derived from the Latin word “buttis,” which means barrel or cask (also where the word “bottle” comes from).  The upper pork shoulder became a Boston specialty and was known around New England as a Boston butt roast.

In the United Kingdom, this cut is called “pork hand and spring”, “pork hand”, or “pork shoulder on the bone.” In Latin America, it’s called “paleta de puerco” — the meat commonly used for carnitas.

The best way to serve it? I think it’s best shredded. And whether you serve it on a buttery Kaiser roll, straight on a plate with an Asian sauce, or fill a corn tortilla with the shredded pork and a few pickled onions, it’s hard to go wrong.

Bone In or Bone Out?

Either will work just fine. If you have a bone-in Boston Butt roast, then you have part of the should blade, and you’ll have to remove the bone before you serve it — but since the pork will be so tender that it pulls apart easily, this hardly difficult. If you have a deboned pork roast, you will need to tie it together with kitchen twine to keep it in a tidy roast shape. Personally, I think it’s easier to have a bone-in roast.

Reverse Sear

What is a reverse sear? Well, common practice for things like pot roast is to sear the meat first, before slowing braising. Here, you’ll be doing the opposite: cooking the Boston butt roast low and slow until it’s pull apart tender. Then you’ll allow the meat to rest — for at least 15 minutes (this could be as long as two hours, depending on when you want to serve it. Then you crank your oven up to a blazing 500° and cook that roast for about 20 minutes to make the fat cap and skin wonderfully crispy. When you take the roast out of the oven, you’ll need to let it rest again for at least 15 minutes to keep from losing all the juices when you pull it apart.

What Should I Cook the Pork Butt Roast In?

Well, I’ve seen a number of people use a shallow cooking pan and a wire rack. But knowing me, this is a recipe for disaster, possibly spilling roast liquid into the oven. I use on oven roasting pan with sturdy handles with a wire rack that’s made for the pan. I just find this much easier to handle taken in and out of the oven. I put a sheet of parchment paper over the rack simply to make it easier to clean later.

Start with a Room Temperature Roast?

If you have time to let the roast come to room temperature before you begin cooking (will take sixty to ninety minutes), the meat will come to a cooking temperature more quickly, and you can reduce the cooking time by about an hour. I started with my roast coming straight out of the refrigerator and it took the roast 10 hours to cook to fork-tender. Frankly, it doesn’t make much difference — you’re waiting around on that meat one way or the other.

How much meat do I need?

Remember that your Boston Butt roast will shrink as it cooks, by approximately 30%. And — if you have a bone-in roast, that will also affect how much meat you have once it’s finished cooking. Here is a link to a handy calculator that will help you figure out how big a roast you should buy, depending on serving size and the number of people you are feeding.

Watching the Roast Progress