Carolina Chopped Pork, Slow-Smoked the Old-Fashioned Way
October 6, 2026 – Haywood Smokehouse
Pulled pork gets shredded by hand. Ours is chopped with a knife. And at Haywood Smokehouse, it is one half of the reason we exist.
Joe Beasley built this place around a simple idea: take the best of every barbecue region and do it right, all under one roof. Texas gets the brisket. The pork belongs to the Carolinas.
Why does Haywood Smokehouse serve Carolina pork?
Because Joe believes Carolina pork is the best type of pork there is, the same way he believes Texas brisket is the best brisket.
Western North Carolina sits at the crossroads of the great barbecue styles, close to Texas, Kansas City, St. Louis, South Georgia, and Eastern Carolina. So we did not handcuff ourselves to one region. Wherever it is good, we bring it here. You can read the whole story in The Greatest Hits of American Barbecue.
What is chopped pork?
Chopped pork is cut with a knife instead of shredded by hand. Ours is a coarse chop, with the bark chopped right in, and it comes to you with no sauce on it, exactly the way it came off the pit.
Where does chopped pork come from?
North Carolina. In this state, when somebody says barbecue, they mean chopped pork.
North Carolina has two great barbecue traditions. In the east, pitmasters cook the whole hog and chop it fine, then season it with a thin vinegar and pepper sauce. In the Piedmont, around Lexington, they cook the pork shoulder instead, and you can order it chopped, sliced, or chopped coarse, with the outside brown, the bark, mixed in.
Ours is a coarse chop with the bark mixed in, the way the Piedmont does it. We cook pork butts, which come from the shoulder.
How do you cook your pork?
Low and slow, over real hickory, at all three of our locations.
Every pork butt gets our own pork rub and goes on the pit overnight. Gas lights the wood and holds the temperature steady, and the hickory does the rest. As Joe puts it, that lets us cook overnight without having to be a boy scout sitting over a fire.
Smoking, the way we do it, means roughly 250 to 275 degrees or below, for as long as the meat needs. That is why we call ourselves a smokehouse.
We do things the old-fashioned way, the hard way. It's low and slow. We don't cut corners, and everything is cooked fresh every day.
How do you know when the pork is done?
We check every single piece.
We do not load a cooker full of butts at night and pull the whole batch at a set time. Every cooker has hot spots and cool spots, so two butts that went on together will not finish together.
Every one of our slow-smoked meats gets probed by hand throughout the cook, not just at the end. It comes off when it is ready, not when a clock says so. Temperature is what rules here, the same way it does with our award-winning Texas brisket.
Do you sauce the pork?
No. Like everything we cook, the pork gets a dry rub and comes off the pit unsauced.
Joe's reasoning is simple: if meat is cooked right, it does not need sauce to hide anything. Taste it first, the way it came off the pit.
Then head to the sauces. The first barbecue sauce was vinegar, born on the Eastern Carolina coast, where it cut through the richness of the pork. Somebody added red pepper flakes. Move west into the Piedmont and ketchup joins the vinegar. Our East Carolina sauce brings both together, with a little ketchup to keep it from settling on the bottom. Then come the mustard sauces, Sweet Carolina and Georgia Fire.
Joe's own way to eat it? Chopped, with no sauce at all.
What is in your pork rub?
It is our own recipe, and it is different from our brisket rub. The pork rub has brown sugar in it, and that sweetness belongs on pork.
If you are keto or carnivore, our brisket rub is the one for you. It has no sugar at all, and Joe will tell you it works on just about anything.
Both rubs are ours, and they are some of our best sellers when folks visit. When nationwide shipping starts in November, our brisket rub and pork rub ship too.
Where else does the pork show up?
In our sides. There is pork in the green beans and the collard greens.
Where did Joe learn to cook pork?
Growing up in Florida, Joe started out smoking mullet. From there he learned butts and briskets, and it grew into a barbecue business that started in South Georgia in 2010. The boys have been cooking barbecue since they were tall enough to open a lid.
Today the same family runs the pits in Waynesville and Dillsboro, and Franklin carries the same tradition under the Hunt family.
Come get some chopped pork
Order ahead online for pickup, or come sit down with us.
Feeding a crowd? Our catering menu covers all three locations.
Join the Get Smoked VIP Club for 10% off for you and a guest on your next visit, plus weekly deals by text.
And for everybody who is not close enough to drive over, nationwide shipping starts in November, to all 50 states plus Canada and the United Kingdom.