Pork Barbecue

Pork barbecue can be intimidating.  Trust me.  I will smoke just about anything to avoid smoking pork barbecue but I must say this has been my most successful attempt to date.  I am here to set your mind at ease by showing how you too can have a beauty like the one above in 16 hours and 32 easy steps.  I kid.  About the steps part at least.  It really does take 16 hours but the labor intensive parts only require about 30 minutes.  Not too bad if you ask me.

Wylie's six weeks late birthday party is this weekend and as usually is the case, we (Stephanie and I) have planned an extravaganza of food that no one under the age of 12 will want to eat.  Did I mention that Wylie is 2?  At his 1st birthday party Stephanie made Salted Caramel Chocolate cupcakes.  What 1 year old has a Salted Caramel Chocolate smash cake?  We also had caramel corn that he couldn't eat, and a long list of other foods that had all the adults rubbing their bellies and reaching for the Tums while poor Wylie ate a pureed meal I had made him.  Sad, isn't it?

Back to the Butt.  I sold out years ago and went with an electric smoker.  Before you laugh at me, I want you to try sitting outside for 16 hours constantly keeping an eye on your heat and see what a challenge it really can be.  The electric smoker offers a constant 275 degree heat.  I started out with a mop sauce that I decided to inject at the last minute rather than commit to going outside every so often to literally mop down the meat.  Before making the mop sauce, go ahead and start soaking your wood chips.  I used apple for this smoke today.  The wood needs to soak for at least an hour before you start smoking.

Mop Sauce:

1/2 bottle of dark beer
2 tablespoons oil
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
2 tablespoons each of worcestershire sauce and Lousiana's hot sauce
2 tablespoons each of dried mustard, paprika, black pepper
1 tablespoon each of cumin, chili powder, salt

Mix well and either inject in the meat before cooking or use it to mop, or brush on to the meat every 2 hours.

After injecting the meat with my sauce I rubbed it down with dry rub.  Dry rub can be anything you want it to be.  The minute I tested the meat late tonight I noticed I had put way too much crushed red pepper in it.  But there is no reason that you can't make a rub that leans towards sweet rather than spicy.  Today I chose a slightly sweet, mostly spicy rub.  Press it in to the meat starting fat side down so that by the time you flip it over you are rubbing the fat side.  You want to smoke the butt fat side up.  

Dry Rub:

1/2 cup paprika

3 tablespoons each of brown sugar, chili powder, cumin

2 tablespoons each of black pepper, dried mustard, cajun  seasoning, and seasoning salt

1/4 cup white sugar

This should make far more than you will actually need.  That is why you need to be careful to apply with a "dirty" hand and scoop it on with a "clean" hand so that you do not contaminate the rub with the raw meat juices.  

Now it is time to let the smoker do it's magic.  I prefer to cook something like a butt in an aluminum pan because there is so much fat in this that will cook off and I don't want it in the bottom of my smoker.  Most of the hard work is done at this point.  I put the butt on the smoker and added in two big handfuls of wet wood chips and walked away.  I set an alarm on my phone to go off every two hours so that I could go back outside and replenish the wood chips in the bottom of the smoker.  Five minutes every two hours isn't too bad.  

After about 13 hours of smoking I decided to bring the butt inside to finish out in my convection oven.  I have a cook to temperature setting on that oven making it possible to insert a thermometer and program the oven to turn off when I hit the goal temperature of 190 degrees internally.  Before putting it in the oven I drained off the fat/juices and wrapped it tightly in heavy duty foil before placing it back in the aluminum pan.  

Ewww.  I did not want the Boston Butt finishing out while soaking
in this pan of fat/slimy juices.  Drain this off for the last stage of cooking.

The Boston Butt went in to a 275 degree oven for another 2 hours or so until it got to temperature.  I then let it sit out on the counter for 2 hours to rest, still tightly covered in the foil.   Before chopping/shredding the meat, I gathered my weapons of choice:  a sharp knife, two forks, and a meat cleaver.  

Next, scrap of the layer of fat from the top.  I know it is a shame to lose all that rub but enough of it got in to the meat so not all is lost.

Carefully pull chunks of the meat and place them on the cutting board.  I wear rubber gloves during this whole process.

Using the meat cleaver, chop the meat to your desired size.  I chopped the first batch pretty finely.

When you get down to it remove the bone from the meat.  Notice how cleanly the bone is in the photo below.  That means it was cooked perfectly to temperature.  It also means that the fat cooked out and is not in the meat any longer.

Since we are serving "pulled pork", I didn't want to chop all of the meat.  I took the second half of the meat and pulled it instead, using the two forks and a bowl.  After all the meat was done I mixed it well so that there is an even mix of chopped and pulled pork.  

All in all I ended up with two large containers of homemade pork barbeque.  Not too bad for a day's work.  And I know the party attendees will appreciate the effort.