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Pork Belly, The New Spare Rib

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Pyrotech

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One of the things I have been cooking a lot lately is Pork Belly, It reminds me of a boneless Spare rib but with more meat.

Shhh.. don't tell my cardiologist.

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I Score a cross hatch into the fat cap

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A good dusting of dry rub, this is a sweet an spicy blend

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I work the meat back and forth so the rub can get down through the scored fat cap.

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The meat side gets a dusting of rub as well.

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The kettle gets set up for a indirect cook, with a few chunks of hickory thrown in.

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The Pork Belly goes in on the cold side of the kettle fat cap up for the whole cook.

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I will rotate the belly about half way through to try and cook it evenly.

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This one ended up reading 204 once It was pulled from the kettle.

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Sometime I will cut the belly into strips to create a boneless pork rib other times I just cutr it inot bite size cubes. and dip them into a sweet and spicy BBQ sauce, or eat them just like this.

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Looks great and if I had to pick one thing as my favorite to smoke it would probably be pork belly.
 
Looking good, what is your cruising temperature? I may have to try this. 👍

Corey

No idea.. the kettle kinda runs where it wants to. I cook more by sight, smell, and touch.

The Mini-WSM has a temp gauge on it, but even then I tend to let the run with the vents wide open, and maybe cut the top vent back to half closed if I need to. Most of the time I am not doing a pure "low and slow" or a pure "hot and fast" more of a Bell curve where I hit both.
 
I'm definitely looking forward to trying my hand at pork bellies. Not sure when they might go on sale, but apparently Sam's Club has them for $3.97/lb. I'll have to get my sister to buy me some.

Those sure look good!
 
I did it! It was wonderful. When it was done (203 or so), I basted it with a sauce of apricot preserves, ground chipotle, cilantro, maple syrup, and W sauce and smoked another 15 minutes.

Now I'm hooked. I rubbed mine with my go-to pork rub, but I saw a You-Tuber did one with SPG. I may try that, but not sure if I want to mess with perfection! Thanks @Pyrotech for the inspiration.
 
Man that looks good! My cardiologist would fire me...
 
Man that looks good! My cardiologist would fire me...

Mine tried to kill me... during the follow up, post heart attack, he rewrote the the dosing for the insulin I was on at the time to a fatal dose. I took his instructions to my Primary doctor and asked why he wrote the dosing instructions for a fatal dose.
 
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