It’s going to be a beautiful saturday, there is excess beer in the fridge, friends are coming over. Time to plot smoking a large hunk of meat for dinner.
| Mise en Place | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Rub | Meat | ||
| 4 tbs | Brown sugar | 8 lb | Pork Shoulder |
| 4 tbs | White sugar | Brine | |
| 2 tbs | Sweet paprika | 1 cup | Mortons kosher salt |
| 2 tbs | Hot paprika | 1 gallon | water |
| 2 tbs | ground black pepper | ||
| 1 tbs | oregano | Wood | |
| 1 tbs | ground cumin | 1-2 lb | applewood chips |
| 1 tbs | granulated garlic | 3-5 lb | Hickory chunks |
| 1 tbs | granulated onion | A bunch | Oak charcoal |
| Equipment | |
|---|---|
| 1 | tub |
| 1 | big green egg or smoker |
| 1 | foil pan, 1/2 filled with water |
| Directions | |
|---|---|
| Step | Action |
| Friday Morning | |
| 1 | Warm the water and disolve the salt. Put the brine in the fridge to cool |
| Friday Afternoon | |
| 2 | Put the butt into a tub, cover with brine. Refrigerate overnight |
| 3 | Mix the rub ingredients and put into a shaker |
| Friday Evening | |
| 4 | Get everything ready to go for the smoker |
| 5 | Reduce excess stock of beer. Set alarm for 6am. Sleep |
| Saturday | |
| 6 | Wake up |
| 7 | Fire up the chimney starter and get the coals going |
| 8 | Take the shoulder out of fridge, pour off brine |
| 9 | Take the shoulder out of the tub and pat dry with paper towels, place on sheet pan fat side down |
| 10 | Apply the rub, do the meat side first then fat side. Leave the fat side up on the sheet pan |
| 11 | Insert your probe thermometer into the deepest part of the shoulder (measure first!) |
| 12 | Put the wood chips/hunks in the now empty tub and cover with water |
| 13 | Go tend to the BGE and get it loaded with charcoal |
| 14 | Once the BGE is up to temp (225) go and fetch the pork |
| 15 | Drain wood chips/hunks and add to smoker, if using BGE put in the place setter |
| 16 | Put in foil pan, place grate, place pork fat side up |
| 17 | Close egg, dial in temp to 225. Let smoke for 4-6 hours. If you started at 6, you are doing well if you are smoking by 7. |
| 18 | Once the shoulder hits the stall, you can up the temp to 275 with no ill effect (heresey, i know) |
| 19 | Evac to sheet pan when pork temp hits 196 |
| 20 | Cover with foil and let rest 1-2 hours |
| 21 | Pull and serve! |
Notes
The rub here is scaled for an 8 lb shoulder. If you need more, just scale up. You can think of the tbs as parts and adjust from there.
If you don’t like cumin, you can drop it or reduce it from the rub. mustard powder is a nice addition. if you want the end result spicy add a part of cayenne.
I like to make sure the tip of my themometer hits the center of the meat by measuring it. Lay the thermometer on top the meat and then eyeball to half way. Grab the thermometer at that spot and then insert into the shoulder halfway down from the top.
For wood chips/chunks. Using the BGE means i have to use charcoal to keep the pit going for the whole smoke. But i find that it takes a bit for the chunks to light and start producing smoke, so i use chips to get smoke going right away, and the chunks keep it going to form the bark. I don’t have a lot of religion on what type of chunks to use, but i do like applewood chips.
Brining can be a pain. If you don’t want to or don’t have the space to – use 1 tbs + 1 tsp of morton’s kosher salt per lb of meat in the rub. I use a little extra salt when doing that as some invariably never makes it to the meat.
Categories: Mains
Yummy!