Smoked from Above’s overnight pulled pork, from rub to sauce

Michelle Holland, co-woner of Smoked From Above BBQ, spices and sauces pulled pork. [John-Henry Doucette/The Princess Anne Independent News]
Michelle Holland, co-woner of Smoked From Above BBQ, spices and sauces pulled pork. [John-Henry Doucette/The Princess Anne Independent News]
BY JOHN-HENRY DOUCETTE

LANDSTOWN – It starts in the late afternoon at Smoked From Above in Landstown Commons Shopping Center

The barbeque business, started in 2005 by Lee and Michelle Holland, starts the process of making pulled pork barbeque with a rub on bone-in pork butt, followed by slow smoking overnight, and a morning of pulling pork from the bone and apart, seasoning and saucing it.

On as recent afternoon, Sue Bell, Lee Holland’s mom, rubbed dozens of pieces of pork before they were loaded in the smoker. She has help from David Taylor, 17, a rising senior at Landstown High School, who prepared the pork.

“I get the covering off the pork and give it to Miss Sue, and she puts on the rub,” Taylor said.

Bell, working steadily, spoke of her son. “He does his own rub for his pork, for his beef and his chicken.”

The rubs are secret. How secret?

“No, I can’t tell you all the secret ingredients,” she said.

“It’s classified,” Taylor said.

“Not that I don’t know them,” Bell said. “I won’t even tell my sisters.”

Sue Bell puts the rub one before the pork goes in the smoker. [John-Henry Doucette/The Princess Anne Independent News]
Sue Bell puts the rub one before the pork goes in the smoker. [John-Henry Doucette/The Princess Anne Independent News]
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Butt after butt is rubbed and loaded into the smoker. It goes all night.

“True smoking is low and slow,” said Michelle Holland the next morning.

Four young men pulled the pork by hand while she seasoned and sauced nearby. The whole process is hard work, all by hand.

“A knife never touches our pork,” Holland said.

After a while, she asked whether the young men wanted to step in to her station so she could make breakfast. 

Breakfast it was.

It was something for the workers: sandwiches on toasted buns containing fried egg, pepper jack and, of course, pork barbeque.

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