Smoked Pork...rump? With Q-View

[lav25]

Hello all, some confusion as to what exactly I smoked due to linguistic and cultural barriers, but it sure tasted good.

I'm an American living in Japan, only got into smoking in the last few years, so I didn't have a strong education on the various cuts of meat back when I was living where I could understand everyone. That, coupled with the fact that the Japanese not only name their cuts of meat differently, but even chop up their livestock along different lines than we do in the West means that every trip to the butcher shop is a new adventure...

But anyway, I got a new MES-30 that I'm loving so far. Wanted to do a pork butt, but I couldn't make myself understood, so I ended up with a "buta roas block", or pork roast block, which I eventually decided may have been a rump roast. Definitely not a shoulder.

Oh well.

I used this rub that I found on Google:

1. 1/2 cup dark brown sugar.
2. 1/2 cup sweet paprika.
3. 1/4 cup kosher salt.
4. 1/4 cup chili powder.
5. 1/4 cup dry mustard.
6. 1 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper.
7. 2 tablespoons crab boil seasoning (recommended: Old Bay)
8. 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger.

except I omitted the "crab boil seasoning" since I have absolutely no idea what that means :). Tried to eyeball the measurements, and next time I'll use less salt (or a measure), but it was pretty good. Anyway, rubbed the meat, left it in the fridge for a while while I got the smoker set up. The little block in the lower left is "smoke wood," a block of compressed sawdust made specifically for smoking food.

It serves the same function as an A-Maze-N smoker, which I would use if the shipping on the pellets wasn't so expensive. This one is whiskey oak barrel wood.

~1kilo (2.2lbs) block of pork in the smoker at 225f (smoker read, my Maverick reads about 10 degrees higher than the smoker itself. Details....)

No water in the pan because... well, I don't remember why I made that decision. It didn't end up hurting anything, so that's good, but I'll try it with next time.

225 for about three hours and the meat got to 160f, so I pulled it out and put more rub on it, foiled it, and put about half a cup of apple juice into the foil pack, kicked the smoker up to 275 (max for the MES-30), and after about another 45 mins or so, it was up to 190 so I pulled it out and let it rest for 30 minutes.

It wouldn't pull, which isn't surprising since it was a block of lean meat rather than a shoulder.

Food processor solved that problem:

And on to the sammiches:

I tried one with some Hawaiian style BBQ sauce, and one just with the juice from the foil pack, and both were great.

I made a ton of mistakes here and still ended up with a meal that both the missus and I were very happy with, so this looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship to me.

Next time I'll put down a bit of foil under the smoke wood, left a minor scorch on the drip pan, but nothing to worry about:

 

[gmc2003]

Looks good from here.

Chris

 

[GaryHibbert]

Great start on your new addiction lav. The "block" looks good. Doesn't look to have much fat so it might have been better sliced.
Couple of suggestions, if you don't mind.
--cook pork to 205 degrees before trying to pull it. Probe test it. A probe or toothpick should slide in like going into warm butter.. if the meat is bone in, the bone should be nice and loose.
--DO NOT put water in your water pan. A MES does not need added water. Fill your pan with sand, gravel, or lava rock as a heat sink and foil it over to keep the contents clean.
--completely foil over the big drip pan at the bottom. Makes cleanup a breeze
--i also put a tinfoil pan under the meat. That will catch the drippings which you can degrease and add back to the meat.
Gary

 

[lav25]

Great start on your new addiction lav. The "block" looks good. Doesn't look to have much fat so it might have been better sliced.
Couple of suggestions, if you don't mind.
--cook pork to 205 degrees before trying to pull it. Probe test it. A probe or toothpick should slide in like going into warm butter.. if the meat is bone in, the bone should be nice and loose.
--DO NOT put water in your water pan. A MES does not need added water. Fill your pan with sand, gravel, or lava rock as a heat sink and foil it over to keep the contents clean.
--completely foil over the big drip pan at the bottom. Makes cleanup a breeze
--i also put a tinfoil pan under the meat. That will catch the drippings which you can degrease and add back to the meat.
Gary

Suggestions are always welcome, thanks a bunch! I had an ECB before, but maintaining any sort of consistent temperature at all was a nightmare, so now that I've gone electric I can start learning to do things the right way, rather than simply "the probe says the bacteria are dead, it's chow-time" way.