SMOKING RECIPE CLIFF NOTES:
Pork Shoulder:
- Trim excess fat off both sides of the shoulder
- Cover the shoulder in rub, wrap, and place in the fridge overnight
- Remove from fridge, tie-up and re-rub the shoulder, and then place on the smoker at 225 degrees
- Plan on 1-1.5 hours of cook time per pound of meat
- Add wood at the beginning, and occasionally spray with apple juice later on throughout the cook
- Remove from smoker when meat's internal temp hits 195 degrees
- Let it cool for at least 30 minutes, then chop or pull apart the meat, and serve!
This post comes with a bit of a delay, but as of about a month ago, Smoke Season has officially begun for me here in Chicago. I decided to kick the season off with a pork shoulder. Quick side note, this piece of meat is also referred to as a pork butt (among other names), but it has nothing to do with the pig's butt. Just fyi.
So moving on, time to smoke my pork shoulder with the plan to turn it into pulled pork sandwiches for a few people we had over to our house.
Two pork shoulders in one packaging
$30 for 16lbs of meat - not a bad deal
As usual, here are the shots of my meat after purchasing it. I went to Costco - no surprise there - and picked up their pork shoulder two-packs. I only needed one for this cook, so I freeze wrapped the second one and put in our freezer to save for later this summer. You can see that pork shoulder isn't that expensive. 16lbs of pork shoulder can make a lot of pulled pork!
Our friends were coming over on Saturday, so that meant Friday evening is when I did all my preparations for the cook.
Top of the 9lb pork shoulder pre-trim
Bottom of the pork shoulder pre-trim
Top of the pork shoulder post-trim
Bottom of the pork shoulder post-trim
The above pictures are both sides of the pork shoulder, before and after trimming the fat. The pork shoulder that I started with was approximately 9lbs, and by the time I was finished trimming, I had removed roughly 1.25lbs. This left me with a 7.75lb hunk of meat to go on the smoker.
When looking at the shoulder from the bottom (pictures #2 and #4), you can see a flap coming off on the bottom left. This is because the bone has been removed from this pork shoulder, so all of the meat doesn't necessarily stayed held together. Prior to go on the smoker, as you'll see later in this post, I tie the shoulder up to make sure it all stays together.
One other thing to point out, though hard to see in my pictures, is on the right side of the shoulder. There, you can see the area referred to as the "money muscle", which is considered to be the tastiest portion of the entire shoulder. In competition BBQ, this is typically the most popular piece to be sliced up and presented to the judges to really wow them.
After trimming and rinsing the shoulder, the next step was to apply the rub.
Pork shoulder with rub
Chicago's own "Lillie's Q" Carolina Dirt rub
Now typically I like to make my own rub, but over the past year, I have picked up a large variety of different commercially sold rubs. So I decided that I would try one out for this cook. After a blind taste-test with my wife, comprised of 6 different rubs (yes, we actually did this), we decided to go with one sold by a local Chicago BBQ restaurant, Lillie's Q. This particular rub was their Carolina Dirt, which had just the right mix of sweet and heat.
Prior to pouring the rub all over the shoulder, I first layered the shoulder in a little bit of canola oil. This is just to help the rub stick to the meat, and help the flavoring get absorbed into the meat. After doing that, I poured rub everywhere. The beauty of the bone being removed and the shoulder not being tied yet at this point is that I was able to get inside all of the crevices to make sure the rub was applied everywhere. The more, the better.
Rubbed and wrapped shoulder before going into the fridge
After doing that, I wrapped up the rubbed shoulder and put it in the fridge. I used my vacuum wrap, which works very well for this job. But typically I just use some cellophane. Either way works. It was 7pm on Friday night when the rubbed and wrapped pork shoulder went into the fridge. That's it for the Friday preparations.
Saturday morning came time to get the cook started. Given I was using a post-trimmed 7.75lb of meat, I was expecting it to take anywhere from 8-12 hours to cook, as I usually estimate around 1-1.5 hours per pound of meat. Since I wanted the meat to be ready around 7 or 8pm, I decided I wanted to get the meat on the smoker by 8am. (Keep in mind, it's always better to done on the earlier side, when you can just wrap the meat in foil and blankets and put it in a cooler to let it sit for a few hours if necessary).
At 7am, I fired up my Weber Smokey Mountain, using - as usual - the Minion Method. Given this was going to be a long 8-12 hour cook, I went with a nearly full chamber of unlit charcoal in my firestarter, as well as a large ring of unlit charcoal in my chamber.
Next, I removed the shoulder from the fridge.
Pork shoulder removed from fridge and wrap
Pork shoulder tied-up and re-rubbed
Upon removing the shoulder from the fridge, I cut it out of the seal wrap that it was in. You can see from the top picture above that it was somewhat wet and slimy as the oil and time in the fridge had helped the rub to start dissolving into the meat.
While the picture doesn't show it, as I mentioned earlier in the post, there were flaps of meat going everywhere since the bone was removed. Therefore, this where I tied the whole thing together, just using some simple string. There is no real method to doing it, other than just tying together any pieces that seem too loose, because you want it all to stay together on the smoker. Also, keep in mind, the string has no impact on the cook, and comes off at the end. So it really doesn't matter.
I then added another layer of rub all around the the meat, just to give it some new life prior to heading onto the smoker. The second picture above shows the shoulder tied-up and re-rubbed, ready to get started cooking.
Top-view of the shoulder on the smoker
Side-view of the shoulder on the smoker
I put the meat on the smoker just about exactly at 8am. It was already running a steady 230 degrees, with my intent to keep the smoker's temperature between 225-250 degrees throughout the cook. At the time I put the shoulder on, I also added 4 chunks of apple wood. You want the meat to get the real smoke exposure early on in the cook, because once it's been on there for a while and the internal meat temperature has risen, it stops holding onto the smoke. My shoulder would be finished cooking when the meat hit an internal temperature of around 195-200 degrees.
Over the course of the next few hours, I added 2-3 chunks of wood on two separate occasions, about 1.5 hours apart from each other. I also continually adjusted the vents to make sure the smoker's temp stayed in that 225-250 degrees range.
After about 3.5 hours on the smoker, the shoulder's internal temperature was about 150 degrees. I stopped adding wood at this point, and started every once in a while spraying the shoulder with an apple juice mixture (simply 3/4 apple juice, 1/4 canola oil). This is just to continue helping the shoulder remain moist.
After about 5 hours on the smoker, 160 degree internal meat temp
I continued to monitor the meat's internal temp, as well as the smoker's temp, for the next few hours, as usual. However, this where this particular cook session and blog post starts to lose its luster. Big pieces of meat typically go through a period called "the stall", usually around 150-160 degrees, where the meat's internal temperature does not budge. This occurs generally because the condensation coming out of meat continually cools the meat off, preventing the temp from raising. If it's really taking too long to break through the stall (it can take 4-5 hours to break through it), you can wrap the meat tightly in foil and put it back on the smoker, to help it push through. I thought I was prepared for this, and planned to not wrap the shoulder, but rather allow it the time to break through on its own.
On this particular cook, I stayed in the 150-160 degree range on my meat's internal temperature for about 4 hours, from 11:30am to 4:00pm. It finally broke through and around 5pm, the temp was close to 170 degrees. However, at this point, it seemed to settle into yet another stall, never going above 175 degrees. I tried increasing the temp in my smoker. I tried wrapping my shoulder in foil (even though I had planned to not do this). And at the end, I tried taking it off the smoker and putting it in the oven at 350 degrees! Despite all of these efforts, the meat's temperature just would not go above 180.
At 9pm - an hour later than when I wanted to be serving the pulled pork - the temperature was still at 180 degrees. So, I decided to cut bait and pull it off and get it ready to be served.
"Chopped" pork, instead of pulled pork
Because I wasn't able to allow the meat's internal temperature to get closer to my 195 degree target, it really didn't break down enough to be easily pulled. You can see in the picture above two sections of meat. The section on the right is where I still attempted to pull the pork shoulder. It didn't really work, and was more so just chunky shreds. The section on the left is where I didn't even bother trying to pull the pork, and instead just chopped it. This area contained the money muscle, so I had plans to chop it (and not pull it) anyway.
Now, here's the beauty of BBQ. Despite this going so terrible "wrong" in the end, the meat was still really good. And everyone who was over didn't know I had screwed it up at all. But, for the sake of the lesson, it's worth noting what went wrong. And I still don't know! I did ask a few experts including one of the main websites I use, and they all seemed to agree that it must have just been the specific piece of meat that I had. Perhaps if I had all night and just let it keep cooking, it would have eventually broken through the second stall and reached the 195 degree mark. But I just didn't have time for it.
In the end, I served the meat from the above picture with some Hawaiian rolls, cole-slaw, and - sticking with the theme - some Lillie's Q BBQ sauce. I was serving 6 people, and the 7.75 (post-trim) shoulder produced enough meat for more than double that. So I vacuum wrapped some extras, put it in the freezer, and plan to break it out on a rainy day!
I apologize for the limited pictures of the finished product, but I was preoccupied with the issues I was facing, and forgot to keep filming! I'll do better next time.
SMOKING RECIPE CLIFF NOTES:
Pork Shoulder:
- Trim excess fat off both sides of the shoulder
- Cover the shoulder in rub, wrap, and place in the fridge overnight
- Remove from fridge, tie-up and re-rub the shoulder, and then place on the smoker at 225 degrees
- Plan on 1-1.5 hours of cook time per pound of meat
- Add wood at the beginning, and occasionally spray with apple juice later on throughout the cook
- Remove from smoker when meat's internal temp hits 195 degrees
- Let it cool for at least 30 minutes, then chop or pull apart the meat, and serve!
