- May 19, 2015
- 1
- 10
Hey all, cooking from Moncton, NB, Canada here. Last summer I got a small little portable charcoal grill because I'd heard so many good things about cooking with charcoal, and thus my grilling and smoking adventures began. The smoky taste that is added to every thing cooked in this thing was amazing. Fast forward to this summer, and I acquired a new Weber Master Touch, 2015 model. This past long weekend I finally got a chance to try a long cook on this thing. Up at 6:00 a.m. in the morning firing up a chimney full of coals was something I never contemplated doing before, that's for sure. But after watching various videos, reading tutorials and everything I could find, I thought I was pretty well prepared for this adventure.
The day before, I asked my local meat shop if they had ever heard of a "boston butt", which my grocery store butcher and a local farmer I normally buy meat from had never heard of in their lives. Luckily, this meat shop lady had heard of it, and they are also known as a pork shoulder, good info for next time I guess!
I found a decent looking rub recipe, applied that as thoroughly as i could the night before, and left it wrapped in plastic overnight in the fridge. (apologies if you're rolling your eyes at this point going "duh" but if i'm missing anything that could make this more amazing, hopefully someone is bored enough to read all this and point things out!. :) )
Maintaining a really consistent temp of 250 throughout a day where it rained off and on was quite an exercise. I was reassured by the internet that just hanging between 225 and 275 was more than fine, but I grabbed a quick 45 minute nap at one point, awakened by my son yelling "daddy, it's at 200!!" (I trained him well that morning to monitor temps for me, what a guy he is!) I fired up 2 smaller chimney loads through the day to keep the heat going. (This led to a small fire as I learned you can't light a chimney directly on your deck boards, but luckily it was raining at that point! I also added coals regularly right in the kettle. I had read that mesquite chips for smoking were not ideal for my pulled pork, but since they were the only viable smoking material I had other than tobacco, I figured they would have to do.
At about 8 hours in, it was looking (and tasting, oops!) mighty fine:
http://i.imgur.com/X2e6O7u.jpg
I wish now that i'd taken more pictures, as this came out even better looking than the above picture, and pulled apart with ease. Even though I didn't quite cook it to an internal temp of 190 as I was directed. It was at 180 after 11 hours, looked good enough, and people were clamoring to eat! Still turned out gloriously, probably the best thing i've ever cooked in my life, and definitely the best thing I've eaten so far this year.
I posted the pic to facebook, a friend recommended this fantastic site called smokingmeatforums.com that he swears by, and being someone in need of new reading materials and meat porn, here I am!
Edit: Since you're here, I do have a question! I've got a few of these beef shoulder roasts in my freezer, ostensibly for grinding up into hamburgers at some point, but after doing the pork shoulder this way, I gotta wonder if someone could do a beef shoulder in the same fashion? Pulled beef? There must be some reason I haven't heard of that before?
The day before, I asked my local meat shop if they had ever heard of a "boston butt", which my grocery store butcher and a local farmer I normally buy meat from had never heard of in their lives. Luckily, this meat shop lady had heard of it, and they are also known as a pork shoulder, good info for next time I guess!
I found a decent looking rub recipe, applied that as thoroughly as i could the night before, and left it wrapped in plastic overnight in the fridge. (apologies if you're rolling your eyes at this point going "duh" but if i'm missing anything that could make this more amazing, hopefully someone is bored enough to read all this and point things out!. :) )
Maintaining a really consistent temp of 250 throughout a day where it rained off and on was quite an exercise. I was reassured by the internet that just hanging between 225 and 275 was more than fine, but I grabbed a quick 45 minute nap at one point, awakened by my son yelling "daddy, it's at 200!!" (I trained him well that morning to monitor temps for me, what a guy he is!) I fired up 2 smaller chimney loads through the day to keep the heat going. (This led to a small fire as I learned you can't light a chimney directly on your deck boards, but luckily it was raining at that point! I also added coals regularly right in the kettle. I had read that mesquite chips for smoking were not ideal for my pulled pork, but since they were the only viable smoking material I had other than tobacco, I figured they would have to do.
At about 8 hours in, it was looking (and tasting, oops!) mighty fine:
http://i.imgur.com/X2e6O7u.jpg
I wish now that i'd taken more pictures, as this came out even better looking than the above picture, and pulled apart with ease. Even though I didn't quite cook it to an internal temp of 190 as I was directed. It was at 180 after 11 hours, looked good enough, and people were clamoring to eat! Still turned out gloriously, probably the best thing i've ever cooked in my life, and definitely the best thing I've eaten so far this year.
I posted the pic to facebook, a friend recommended this fantastic site called smokingmeatforums.com that he swears by, and being someone in need of new reading materials and meat porn, here I am!
Edit: Since you're here, I do have a question! I've got a few of these beef shoulder roasts in my freezer, ostensibly for grinding up into hamburgers at some point, but after doing the pork shoulder this way, I gotta wonder if someone could do a beef shoulder in the same fashion? Pulled beef? There must be some reason I haven't heard of that before?
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