Jamaican Jerk pulled pork

gruelurks · Sep 26, 2009

After many successful smokes with regular BBQ rub, I wanted to try something different with my next PPB smoke. One of my co-workers and his wife are throwing an end of summer BBQ for which I offered to bring some BBQ to. This week I picked up two butts at Kroger for $0.97/lb that were injection free of added liquids. One got the normal BBQ rub applied, but the second was destined for bath in island flavor, an attempt to help stave off the impending fall and colder season here in Michigan.

I bathed the butt in a 1/2 gallon of pulp free orange juice and a 1/2 gallon of pineapple juice mixed together in a large pot for 36 hours. Tonight I pulled it out and let it air dry for a while before applying a rub I sort of hobbled together from various online recipes.

Orange/pineapple juice bath

Air drying in the pan. Note a bit of the juice clinging to the meat. You can smell the citrus of the juice coming off it.

The rub. I sacrificed my coffee grinder which I hardly use anymore to grind up a metric ass load of spices. Spices included:
Allspice
Ground cloves
Kosher salt
Fresh ground peppercorn
Ginger
Thyme
Rosemary
Brown sugar
Chipotle chile powder
Cayenne pepper
Ground cinnamon
Dried, ground habaneros I dried in my oven the night before.
Some lemon and lime zest
(Most of this recipe came from here: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Jamaica...ub/Detail.aspx)

The initial rub, which I let sit for another 15 minutes before applying rub number two.

After rub two, ready to be wrapped and chilled for a few hours before hitting the smoker tonight.

Tonight it goes in around 11-12 PM, with cherry and apple wood. I bought a pint Captain Morgans rum to mix with apple juice and cider vinegar to spritz with thru the first couple of hours. Tomorrow I plan to figure out some sort of rum sauce recipe to use the other 1/2 pint in.

I'll be sure to post more as the night and day goes on.

roadrunr · Sep 26, 2009

It all looks n sounds great, but...you may wanna go easy with pineapple juice specially with pork butts. It will turn them to mush from the acid content. Cant wait for the qview...party on!!

gruelurks · Sep 26, 2009

Thanks for the heads up, I searched around a bit before trying pineapple juice and saw a couple posts warning on using it with loin but not butts. Figured butts wouldn't be too bad since they are destined to become tender and pulled apart anyways. If it turns out bad I'll still have a good regular one to fall back on.

After unwrapping from the plastic wrap earlier. Jerk rubbed butt is in front.

Just tossed them in the MES with a small brisket.

forluvofsmoke · Sep 26, 2009

Very nice, so far!!! I think your jerked butt will go over fine...I've used pineapple juice as part of a brasing liquid several times recently and the results were excellent for PP...fall apart, but still had the grain intact for a really nice & tender texture.

Man, that all looks good, and you just got started!

I noticed you're staying clear of the hot spot over the right/rear of the MES. I've never used one yet, but have heard of the dreaded problem...you're doing it up right.

Good start...I'll be along later in the AM...got some smokin' to do here too, so I'll be lookin'!

Thanks for sharing all this.

Eric

napalm · Sep 26, 2009

Looks great! can't wait to see what it turns out like.
Damn I'm hungry for some PP now and its only 07:53!

gruelurks · Sep 26, 2009

Thanks for following along, on both sides of the pond. :-)

I just took a quick peek to check my temp inside. The MES was set to 240 to account for the cold night but the temp on the thermo was reading 250. I dropped it down 10 degrees and added another batch of apple/cherry wood chips to the tube just now @ 3:330 EST.

I'll probably add some more water to the pan in another hour, then head to bed for a couple hours. The beers are finally catching up to me and I've run out of Netflix to watch tonight.

fire it up · Sep 26, 2009

Netflix? Message me if you want and I can point you in the direction of some streaming movie sites. All completely legal but anyway...
Still looking great, vodka is kicking in on my end so I was just checking the site before bed.

forluvofsmoke · Sep 26, 2009

You're most welcome! Thanks for stayin' with it and posting like you have thus far...it'll be worth it come Saturday at meal time...

Hmm...it IS Saturday already...2:25 AM here.

Lookin' better all along...is that possible?

I'm still wide awake, but wifey tells me I'm gonna have trouble if I don't get some sleep. It's amazing what 8 mugs of cappucino, a couple pepsi's and some interesting threads here will do for ya! Ahhh, it's all in a day's fun!

Catch ya later on this...eyelid inspections do sound like a good plan right now.

Eric

gruelurks · Sep 26, 2009

Noooooooooooo! Crap!!!!!

My digital controller just died on me during my last spritz. I just pulled the brisket out to foil and when I went back the unit was cycling through the tenths place over and over.... 170, 180, 190, ...270, etc...

I got the oven heating up now to back me up, hopefully they got enough smoke in the past few hours to get them where they need to be in terms of flavor, but man, this sucks ass!

Edit: I have everything in the oven now at 225 degrees with Taylor thermos keeping track, I think everything got enough smoke to make it tasty, butts were at 155 out of the dead smoker, brisket chunk at 160. Brisket wrapped in foil on top shelf of oven, two butts are sitting on a rack above a pan finishing off.

This sucks, guess I need to contact Masterbuilt and see about a new controller. :-(

beer-b-q · Sep 26, 2009

Looks Great So Far...

Ouch on the digital controller....

cheapchalee · Sep 26, 2009

Sorry to hear about the problems, at least in the oven you can go to sleep for a couple of hours.

Charlie

chainsaw · Sep 26, 2009

Sorry to hear-had a similar problem with my MES only it just went to 300 and sayed there. This was when it was first turned on. They were nice, it was under warranty still, sent me another control. It did the same thing. So it was someting inside telling the control, maybe the heat sensor? Then They sent me the whole box, minus the door, shelves, pan, etc.Works fine now. I hope all your problem is the controller. Ever since that happened I always read all I can about MES problems. I was looking at a Cookshack (they are built here in town) but I could by almost 3 MES smokers for thier cheapest one, albeit the Cookshack is very robust.
Good luck!

gruelurks · Sep 26, 2009

I think a bit of moisture must have got in to the controller last night, we had a light sprinkle of rain. I keep it under the awing of my house on the deck, but it must have got wet anyways.

Good news is when I got back up at 10am, I checked the controller and it turned on and it started functioning normally again. So I may have dodged a bullet but I am still going to see about replacing it.

The other good news is my house smells absolutely awesome this morning. The wife is complaining about the smell keeping her constantly slavering today. :-)

forluvofsmoke · Sep 26, 2009

Woah, close call there, buddy! Glad it's going to work out OK. You may want to get the extra controller as a spare and just keep running with the original unit for now...who knows, it may make it for another year or so...you'll never know without trying.

If the controllers are that susceptible to moisture, I would look into making some sort of cover to shed the water away from the controller and off the sides of the cabinet...maybe something that can be temporarily attached with a simple retainer system of small latches available from the hardware store. Bungee cords or wire could be used as a last ditch effort to secure it to the cabinet, keeping any combustibles away from the cabinet, of course.

Keep on rolling with it, you're in cruise mode now!

Eric

mballi3011 · Sep 26, 2009

I will definetly be watching this one for the love of jerk. Being a Jamamerican having been there (11 times) more then the amount of three they say it takes to be labeled Jamamerican. We love it there and plan to retire in the house our adapted son is building with us. We own a car and some land also but back to the meat. It looks good so far and I'm hoping that ti comes out well and spicey the scotch bonnet pepper should help with that and the other spices sounds really Jamacian. I got me eyes on this one. Ya Mon and Everything is Irie

gruelurks · Sep 26, 2009

I had to pull the butts from the oven around 1:30pm, they only ever reached 180 degrees each +/- a point. They somewhat passed a fork test, so I feel a couple hours in the cooler foiled and wrapped will help them along the way.

The jerk butt tastes phenomenal, I didn't take a pic of it yet since I wanted to get it coolered ASAP, but I promise pics of it from the party later when I pull it.

The best part of the night for me so far is the brisket turned out awesome! I finally nailed one that was so fork tender, it couldn't even be picked up with a fork. I'll post a beef thread with Q-Vue on that shortly.

Thanks for watching, and as always, thanks to everyone on here for the excellent advice and tips!

forluvofsmoke · Sep 26, 2009

They'll be pretty tough to pull @ 180*, that's an OK temp for sliced with a good long rest to redistribute the juices throughout the meat though. So, pull what you can and slice or chuck up the rest. Nothing wrong with a sliced butt/shoulder...it's a different texture than some might prefer, but it's still good eats in a sammie...been there, done that, would definately do it again!

And, your most welcome! I really enjoy following the progressive q-view threads, so, it's been a great pleasure to watch & help you out where I can along the way.

I bet that JJP has a wicked good flavor...

Please do give us the final word and some more pics when you get it on with the devouring phase of this great smoke!

Good job!

Eric

rivet · Sep 26, 2009

Excellent thread, and sorry about your controller scare....glad it worked out ok. Your Jerk Pork sounds fantastic! Can't wait to see pics and you're making me want to do one like that myself. Love jerked meats, and the whole carribean flavor tastes great in the fall and winter to me.

Congratulations!

gruelurks · Sep 27, 2009

And the results are in...after a few cups of coffee and clearing the head from all the high gravity beers that were consumed last night. The jerk pork was a hit, people who tried both preferred the flavor of the jerk over the BBQ rub by far. The penetration of flavor in to the meat was unbelievable. Every bite had a good hint of the outer rub, and the juice bath it took didn't seem to make it mushy, but it was moist and tender, the most I've ever had yet in a butt. I served them up with SoFlaQuer's finishing sauce and a Captain Morgan Spiced Rum BBQ sauce recipe I found online. Both butts pulled apart with little effort, something I was concerned about due to the lower temp that I coolered them at. Sorry I only got the one pic of the jerk butt. I had just pulled the other one right before this and people were lined up waiting for the pork and other food our hosts of the night cooked. Good times with good friends, good beer, good food and a good live band.

bmudd14474 · Sep 27, 2009

Looks great. Glad to hear that it was a major hit. I have used orange juice before but may have to give this a whirl.

Jamaican Jerk pulled pork

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