First smoke ever pulled pork!

[bolton]

Tonight will be my first run smoking anything. I've done a lot of reading on this forum to figure out how I am gonna smoke this so here we go.

I have a 10 lb pork shoulder which should run me at about 15 hours ( 1.5 hrs/1lb ) I already put a rub on it last night so it's already to go. I'll post pics and let you guys know how it is going throughout the night. Wish me luck!

 

[heyer5]

Good luck!  It'll be tasty I bet!

 

[rdknb]

Good Luck!!

 

[bolton]

I'm a few hours in to it now. I decided to go with a little beer instead of water or apple juice. I don't know how that's gonna turn out exactly but I have found a problem. I ran out of beer for myself. Damn the luck!
 

 

[zimq]

For a 10 pounder, might want to plan on 2hrs per lb. Just a heads up. From my experience, the bigger they are, the longer they take per lb.

Zim-Q


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[bolton]

Thanks for the info! Maybe I can catch a few hours of sleep for the long smoke!

 

[bolton]

Rubbed and ready to go!

Just a few more hours till it gets wrapped.

Dripping with juices and ready to go!

It all turned out pretty well. I smoked for about 12 hours or so at 240 degrees.

The one problem I had is that the meat is a little bitter. I haven't even put any sauce on it yet. Any suggestions?

 

[dnic]

I hear that too much smoke can make the taste bitter; did you notice an abundance of smoke?

 

[austinl]

I hear that too much smoke can make the taste bitter; did you notice an abundance of smoke?

There are two basic sides of that statement: One if you use a wood that has a very strong flavor like mesquite for long periods it can be overpowering; two, if you do not maintain a high enough temperature at your source of smoke it will produce a very overpowering flavor no matter what type of wood it is.  I've heard some other opinions about choking off the exhaust too much producing an overpowering smoke-flavor however, it is my opinion that you will snuff-out the burn before it has enough time to transfer that flavor to your food.

 

[bolton]

It seemed like it had a decent amount of smoke. At first I noticed a lot of smoke and remembered reading about just keeping the chips in the holder (for the MES30) instead of dropping them in to the chip tray. I did that with the exhaust about 3/4 open. I replaced the chips every hour using about a hand full of apple chips. I was wondering if it was the smoke or maybe the rub I used. The bark tastes horrible but the meat isn't that bad. Once I cooled it down and added a little BBQ sauce it was pretty good!

I used Jim Beam Spicy Bourbon as my rub. Not sure how that should taste but maybe I should look in to using a different rub?