Wood Ranch Carolina Pulled Pork

I grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina, and my first memory of barbecue was a chopped pork sandwich with slightly creamy and tangy coleslaw, also chopped, on a soft hamburger bun.   The pork was bathed in semi-sweet, vinegary sauce with just a bit of tomato in it.  That’s what known as “Western Carolina Barbecue Sauce.”  The better-known version, with no tomato, comes from the eastern part of the state, up around Raleigh.  It’s in Lexington where the transition begins.  It’s all delicious. When we decided to put pulled pork on the menu at Wood Ranch, of course it had to be the one I’d been making at home for decades.  I didn’t chop the meat, but pulled the smoked pork shoulder apart after it had been smoked in hickory and apple wood for hours at a very low temperature. Instead of the usual gloppy, use-on-everything barbecue sauce you find in many places, we use our version of the vinegar-based Western Carolina sauce.  The pulled pork at Wood Ranch has been a huge success.  Here’s a version of it you can more easily make at home.  I’m going to assume you have a smoker and know how to use it. If you don’t have a smoker, you can do all of this in your oven without the wood smoke. You’ll also want to consider getting an injector.  I’ll give you a simple recipe for the sauce, injection solution and dry rub, one that most people find very easy to like.