Father's Day Pork Shoulder

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ShinyFirefly

Newbie
Original poster
Mar 1, 2018
12
2
The hubs wants two smoked pork shoulders today so I was up at 8:00 getting the cooker going.

They are both about 3.5 lbs. I slathered with some mustard and then I did my rub in two layers. First is a my basic rub of coarse sea salt, onion powder, garlic powder, cumin, Hungarian paprika, turbinado sugar and cayenne pepper. Did that part last night and then wrapped them in plastic wrap and put them in the fridge over night. An hour and half before start I brought them out and injected with solution of apple juice, Worcestershire & soy sauce, then topped it off with a final layer of more paprika, hickory smoked sea salt, black pepper, some all spice and brown sugar. Put them back into the fridge for about 30 minutes. Brought them out to get to room temp at 9:00 am.

Just before cook start at 9:30 am:
PorkShoulder_6.17.18.jpg


11:45-12 noon: Having trouble with the temp control. I'm using the ThermPro TP-08 for the first time and the temp is showing about 40 degrees higher than what my PitBoss ceramic cooker normally shows. I've been fighting to get it down from 340 for about two hours. All vents are closed. (Should have used the offset cooker, ugh.) I would say this temp is correct because I've often had trouble with items getting done faster than I thought they should be. So evidently I've been cooking at much higher temps. Was able to get it down to about 280 and meat is temping at 160 degrees, likely heading into the stall. Spritzed once with apple cider vinegar. I also dropped chips everywhere. :p

Pork Shoulder2_6.17.18.jpg


12:30: Stall is starting to pass. I expected longer but I'm sure it's shortened due to my higher temps. We're heading into steady temps about 265, and food temp is climbing about one degree every 10 minutes. At this rate I'm not sure I even want to foil. Dinner isn't until 5 pm, but we'll see how fast it climbs.
 
Update at 2:30 pm. Decided to foil around 1:15 pm because things weren't progressing, so we're holding at 260 degrees in the smoker with meat back up to 175. Hoping it reaches 205 by 4:30!
 
Looks good, the stall can be a real pain. How did it turn out? Inquiring minds want to know.

Chris
 
They were excellent, both of them. They made it to 210 by 4:30 and I pulled them and placed them in a cooler for about 45 minutes. Here's a pic, but keep in mind I forgot to take a picture of the first one so it had been shredded and devoured inside this dish. Then I kind of dumped the other one in there and it started to fall apart. Not my best "after" photo, but it was awesome. Bone pulled right out, shredded easily, and had some bark to it. I could have used a bit more bark so maybe I won't spritz next time.

Lesson learned is that I realize now I've been cooking at some higher temps and obviously that's okay because things are still turning out.
PorkShoulder3_6.17.18.jpg
 
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