Smokin' This Weekend

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bobank03

Smoking Fanatic
Original poster
Jun 17, 2013
946
33
Nutting Lake MA USA
Hey all, I was at the local super market today and just happened to stumble upon a very lonely looking 5 pound pork shoulder and a nice looking rack of baby-back ribs. So I will be taking some time Saturday to hang out by the ECB! I promise some qview etc as I proceed. Hope ya'll will join me. Maybe have a few cold beverages and all. LOL! 
 
I'm planning to do a small pork shoulder (only 1.5 lbs, but money muscle included) as well as an experimental pork shoulder (more on this later) on Sunday (Saturday night in North America).
 
sounds like a plan! I usually do a butt, but this time the store had the picnic shoulder cut, so this is my first time doing this particular cut, but I don't see any issues.

I'm going to fill up the propane tank so I can switch from charcoal to propane once I wrap at the stall (or 3 hours or so). No sense wasting the lump charcoal on a foil wrapped piece o' pork. 

I might even do the whole smoke with propane. Either way, I'm going to use the AMNTS for smoke instead of the chunks. 
 
 
I'm going to fill up the propane tank so I can switch from charcoal to propane once I wrap at the stall (or 3 hours or so). No sense wasting the lump charcoal on a foil wrapped piece o' pork. 
I'll probably do the same thing, with butane instead of propane.  Might even switch to the crock pot, depending on the weather.
 
I like that conversion rig.  What does it look like from the inside?

Weather for me is a double-edged sword.  I love being able to camp out next to the smoke, put on a Sox game, and watch the temps, but if it's a nice day, that usually means the neighbors are going to hang their wash out on the line, so I have to make sure I don't smoke their laundry along with my meat (although I have overheard their kids saying how awesome my shoulder smells).

I guess it's good motivation to try out a few other methods I wouldn't normally use, like wrapping and crock-potting.

I'm also giving this a go tomorrow.  I'm tentatively calling it operation zombie, since I'm trying to re-animate a pork shoulder:

http://www.smokingmeatforums.com/t/166807/starting-with-thinly-sliced-pork-shoulder#post_1212904
 
I found an old pic from last year


I put a chunk of apple wood into the soup can and hung it up there so I could get some smoke. It worked pretty good, though I did get a little bit of flame blow back into the ventricle and Brinkmann had to send me a new fuel line as it melted a little bit. 

I learned how to do this via a video on you tube. Very easy to do if you have good access to propane. 
 
Smoked this a few weekends ago, but had it on Friday night.  My daughter doesn't care much for cooked salmon, so while she was out of town with her grandma, I thawed this out, pulled out the bones, and served this pulled-style with Classico alfredo over radiatore pasta.

Salmon is a refreshing change of pace on the ECB.  I believe this is brined coho. I do a cold smoke using pressed apple sawdust bricks for about 1.5-2 hours, then cook over about a 200-degree fire consisting of 50% sakura cherry and 50% Kingsford blue, watching closely to brush away albumen as it forms.


It's the one thing I can do on my smoker that my Japanese mother-in-law enjoys.
 
That is a neat setup with the soup can.  When you use that system, how much wood do you use, in what form (chunks or chips), and what do you do with the ashes?
 
I use chunks and chips, what ever I can find at the time, but I prefer the chunks as they last longer. When I need more, I lift off the ECB and remove the can with a pair of plyers as it gets pretty hot and then I add back on a second can. I have three of them that I can chunk up. I have an ash can (small steel garbage can, about 5 gallons with a steel lid) and I dump everything into it. It there are still chunks or chips left I dump them into the next can and keep going. 

I might go through 2 for a 3 hour smoke and then it just depends on how much smoke I want. The foil helps keep the chunks from flaming up too much. 

I haven't smoked any fish on the smoker yet. I have been out fishing the local lakes and streams trying to get a couple of trout to filet and smoke, but no luck yet. 
 
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Smoked two cuts today.  Here's the small (1.5-lb.) pork shoulder, which is about 50% or more money muscle.  I did this on the ECB with lump and cherry at about 225° for 4 hours, to an IT of about 180°, then put wrapped it and put it in the oven to finish for about 90 minutes, with a final IT of 200°.  Next, I firmed up the bark a bit with a butane torch, wrapped it in heavy-duty paper towels, and let it rest in the cooler for an hour before slicing it.  I decided to go with slices because I gave some to my Japanese neighbors, who might not know what to do with pulled pork.


Might be my most tender pork shoulder to date!
 
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make sure you give some to the neighbors with the hung outside laundry that smells like smoke! Looks really good! Both turned out really well! 
 
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