this weekend's pork shoulder (butt section) - q-view to come!

[tasunkawitko]

alright, along with my infamous first brisket smoke that i am doing tomorrow:

http://www.smokingmeatforums.com/for...d=76994&page=1

i will also be offering a 6,9-lb pork shoulder to any guests who show up.

pretty basic stuff - brush down with mustard, then rub, then apply mop as needed when tending fire etc. then RIVET'S awesome finishing sauce.

for the rub, i've got a jar that is a combination of stuff mixed together from a couple of different rub attempts. about half of it is durkee's st. louis style rib rub. when it's all together, it's actually pretty good stuff. when i use this up, i am switching over to exclusively no-salt rubs and am only going to add raw (trubinado) sugar, if i add any sugar at all. i am also going to add half an envelope of lemon/lime koolaid mix as per buzz's suggestion,

mop will be my basic mop that i ahve been using over the past months, except i will use mountain dew rather than dr. pepper.

i may or may not brush on a glaze at the last 1/2 hour. probably not, but it is an option. if i do, it will be the cider vinegar/mustard/brown sugar (equal proportons) glaze.

also, with this smoke, i will be converting 10 japs into 20 ABTs. i've got an interesting idea for these that i will share later, if i am able to do it.

will keep updates as well as post q-view!

 

[tasunkawitko]

ok - shoulder is slathered down with mustard and rub has been applied - it is rested and waiting to be tossed on the grate at dawn's early lgight (or whenever the heck i get out of bed!

as i said before, my rub is about 50% durkee's st. louis style and 50% leftovers from a couple of home-made rub attempts that were pretty good but not quite there. i also added an envelope of lemon/lime kool-aid according to buzz's suggestion. the rub looks and tastes great -- one i brushed it on and it wetted down from the mustard, it became an awful brownish color, but the flavors seem to be hopping all over!

will report tomorrow.

 

[rivet]

Hey that's mighty nice of you to make extra food for anyone who drops by... If I didn't live a thousand miles away I would be there! Good luck on your smoke and hope the weather cooperates for you. I got 2 inches of rain yesterday

Looking forward to hearing the results on the lemon/lime kool aid~sounds intriguing. Also, I posted the brisket side sauce recipe on your other thread on today's brisket smoke.

 

[tasunkawitko]

g'morning, rivet! thanks for posting that side sauce recipe! it will be used!

well guys, i'm getting a slightly late start here with my briskett and shoulder, BUT my brisket and shoulder are both a couple of lbs. smaller than normal, so it should all be good.

should have meat on soon - looking forward to it!

 

[tasunkawitko]

alright, i put the meat on about an hour ago at 0900 on the dot - at 0930, i also tossed on a cuple of chubs of sausage brushed with mustard and with rub all over them. they were frozen, so it's going to take a while, but the results should be worth it. i wanted to try these frozen to test a theory that a friend has about cooking brisket from a frozen state in order to maximize tenderness and moisture. the one drawback i could see to this method is a possible build-up of creosote, so i figured i would try with a couple of 1-lb fatties.

will report on results!

 

[desertlites]

good luck on todays smoke-sounds interesting

 

[tasunkawitko]

it's turning out pretty good so far, desertlites.

1100 - mopped the pork shoulder, the chubs of sausage and the brisket. for the brisket, i elected to go with a stick of butter melted into two cans of beer. in an attempt to keep the butter from clumping while i applied the mop, i added a little olive oil and used a blender to mix all together. it seems to work at least long enough to at least spray the mop on.

for the shoulder and chubs, i varied my standard mop and came up with something interesting. i used 3/4 cup each of orangle juice and apple pop, then a quarter cup each of teriyaki sauce and olive oil. looks good, tastes good!

will report on progress.

 

[rivet]

Thinking about those flavors with pork, I think you nailed that one on the head- good job! Take some pics so we can see....I'm drooling over heah!

 

[tasunkawitko]

ask and you shall receive, rivet - here's how everything looked at noon:

the chubs were done and they were great!

 

[rivet]

That is some fine looking feasting you have going on, Tas~ You are not only good-to-go, but from the looks of it, you're gonna be the hero of whoever drops by to participate! Wow, well done bud, keep us posted.

 

[tasunkawitko]

i'm a little concerned about temperatures in the smoker, but we'll see how it goes. it is cooling off out here and getting grey, so i threw on the ol' trustworthy blanket and temps seem to be improving a bit. still lower than my normal preferences, but for a brisket smoke, they might be just fine.

 

[rivet]

You might want to get rid of the water pan about this time if you are needing the blanket on the smoking chamber. Remember it is a heat-sink and at this point you are trying to maintain temps. You have been spritzing all along, so you should be good.

 

[tasunkawitko]

yep - i just checked and water pan's about empty! all it is eally doing now is deflecting flames from hitting meat, which i think will be OK.

here's a shot from about 1745 -

along

with cooler temperatures this afternoon (it's finally starting to get nicer again) and rain, the brisket and shoulder are in the middle of the dreaded "plateau," which is something that all alrger hunks of meat seem to go through as they cook - the temperature levels off for quite a while, sometimes up to a couple of hours, and occasionally even start dropping a little. sooner or alter, the temps start coming up again, but the wait can kill a guy. to make it even worse, my fire started to die off around the same time and the smoker temperature went down pretty far - altogether, i am sure i lost 5 or 6 degrees in internal temperature of the meat, maybe a little more.

temps look like they are starting to go back up now, so we might be in good shape. will keep y'all posted.

 

[fire it up]

Awesome smoke you have going. It all looks really good.
Rivets finishing sauce sounds like a winner!
So did the chubs have any different of a flavor/texture/moisture compared to thawed?
Looking forward to the end results and can't wait to hear how the lemon/lime turned out.
Sure wish I could drop by but when I did a bit of a search from here to Chinook this is what I found...
Driving directions to Chinook, Montana
2,117 mi – about 1 day 10 hours



Oh well, I'll just have to put on a bib and drool at my computer.

 

[rivet]

Laughing here! I did a thumbnail, old fashioned atlas, guesstimate and came up with a little over a thousand miles. Guess we will feast vicariously!

 

[tasunkawitko]

ha ha - got a laugh out of that one, FiU - door's always open and we always cook just a little more than we need so that anyone who drops by can have some...OR we can have leftovers for lunch all week long.

to answer your questions:

the chubs were great - i left them on longer than i would normally leave them on (2.5 hours rather than 2 at most) and i think because of this the texture was a little drier than i am used to with other fatties from similar sausage (this was JD regular, i usually use maple - JD isn't the best but it is unfortunately the best one can get in my half-horse town on a sunday morning). in other words, i think i oer-cooked it and it would ahve been done when it was supposed to be. this goes back to a discussion rivet and i had a whole ago about the transfer of heat - i believe the concept is called entropy and it states that heat will transfer from hot to cold faster than it will from hot to warm. this leads me to believe that, once yu take into account the fact that one pieces of meat is frozen and the other is thawed, cooking from a frozen state will result in pretty-much the same cooking times as normal. i beleive if i would have checked them when i normally check chubs, they would have been done (or almost done) and juicy. the next step in my experimentation will be doing a frozen chub along with a thawed one. i will check cooking times and even if they are differnt, i will compare results (moisture, texture etc.) when they are done.

the lemon-lime definitely did not hurt the flavor at all! the color of the bark and juices were a little darker, but tasted great. it did add a little something without taking over, and i am glad i tried it. will be using it again in the future!

mop worked out great, and finishing sauce, as always, was really good.

i put the leftovers in a tupperware bowl in the fridge (of course) and this morning saw that the juices had turned into a nice jelly. i skimmed off the fat and added some of the jelly to a portion ofthe pulled pork and heated it up on medium in the microwave while i flipped on a stove burner (electric) and used it to heat up three corn tortillas. i rolled the pilled pork (still tangy from the finishing sauce) in the tortillas and enjoyed a very good breakfast that is probably similar to one that folks were enjoying 5000 years ago in aztec country......

can't beat it with a stick!

(edit) - forgot to add this - just like my brisket, which i was cooking at the same time, this pork shoulder was just a little bit under bbq stage in the middle. it was definitely done, and tasted great. the rub did its job well and all the flavors were there. most of it pulled easy but did not fall apart like usual which is a sign to me that something wasn't quite right. the middle section about the size of a softball did not pull easily and was chopped up into pieces. - tasted good, but not what i prefer. as i said in the brisket thread, i WILL be checking the accuracy of my thermometer.

another thought that occurred to me is that the meat might have come up to 192 a ltittle too fast. toward the end i banked up the fire pretty good in order to get things finishined, and ironically, i ran out of fire just as the temps internally reached target. anyway, the higher temps for the final part of the smoke (smoker temps were probably 300 or maybe a little more) might have resulted in the lack of "fall-apart-ness."

 

[rivet]

Hey sounds like you had a winner here too! Don't understand about the center except that it was not as hot as the rest of it you temped. Good idea on calibrating your thermo... Dip it in boiling water-not touching the bottom- it should read 212F, if not then you know what the offset is. Also put it in icewater slurry it should read 32.

Glad to hear about the lemon lime kool aid~ I have to try that myself. It sounds like a great flavor mix to the rub. Did you use unsweetened?

Man, your breakfast sounded outstanding!!

Nothing better than a good hot corn tortilla taco anytime of the day. Wowee, now I am starving and lunch/dinner is half an hour away.

Don't be too rough on yourself, you did an excellent job on the smoke and just because it didn't meet every expectation of yours, doesn't mean it wasn't a success. We tend to set the bar very high on ourselves when we smoke, all of us, or we wouldn't be part of the SMF! You definitely earned points for all your effort, Tas~!

 

[tasunkawitko]

definitely use unsweetend kool-aid, rivet. i tried the unsweetened koolaid in both rubs i made, this one (which has sugar) and the one i used for the brisket (which has no sugar). both times, results with the koolaid mix werex subtle and good - you definitely get a hint of something there!

i agree 100% that we tend to set our own bar high. my wife was asking yesterday (silly girl) what the obsession with BBQ was. i tried to tell her that it's only partially about the good food - even more, what it's about is taking cheap meat and turning it into finger-licking stuff that will draw all the neighbors who live downwind. the challenge of getting the right flavors, tending the fire, judging the temps and the doneness and everything esle is the addiction - the food is just the icing on the cake!

 

[rivet]

That's pretty much well put!

 

[tasunkawitko]

finally! q-view!

pork shoulder:

turned out pretty good with the unsweetened lemon-lime koolaid packet added. the sugar in the rub made it all good but of course resulted in a very dark color - i was careful to try not to let it get carbonized and had a little success.

no pix of the insides because it looked pretty bad - half pullable, half not pullable. tasted great, though!