Two years ago, I made a big batch of pulled pork for the graduation of the daughter of a friend that I graduated high school with. You can read about that experience here:

http://foodsoftheworld.activeb...party_topic2237.html

Now, her family has asked me to make another batch, basically the same, for another graduation in the family. I did the last batch simply for the cost of the ingredients and materials as my contribution to the festivities, and offered the same terms this time. The only real differences will be the rub (using Mad Hunky this time, instead of the good-but-not-nearly-as-good-as-Mad Hunky rub that I used last time), the charcoal (trying Stubbs in place of Kingsford Blue Bag) and the smoking wood (apple instead of hickory).

This evening, I slathered a 7.80-pound and an 8.22-pound Boston butt shoulder roast with French's yellow mustard, then gave each a nice, liberal coating of Mad Hunky rub on all surfaces. I also slathered and applied Mad Hunky rub to a 9.71 picnic shoulder that for our own Sunday supper; finally, I rolled a 2-pound sage-and-maple pork sausage fatty - coated with Mad Hunky and stuffed simply with cheddar cheese - for brunch tomorrow morning. All are currently saran-wrapped and chilling in the refrigerator, waiting for tomorrow. Finally, we cleaned out the firebox of the smoker, then filled the charcoal chimney with starter charcoal and some paper in the bottom. Everything should be ready to roll in the morning!

I took photos throughout the process of preparing the pork shoulders and will post them as time allows, hopefully in a progressive format.

The plan is to put the meat to the heat early tomorrow morning before 0700; lighting the charcoal chimney at about 0600 or 0630 depending on how things go. I'll basically be following my standard method for pulled pork barbecue ; I also intend to utilise my standard, awesome-tasting mop and finishing glaze for this project, and have all the ingredients for these accesories ready to go. Finally, I will be supplying a quart of very good eastern Carolina pulled pork finishing sauce, the recipe for which can be found in the "method." thread above.

I've talked recently with a couple of friends about foiling shoulders. I never have before, and have been very happy with results; However, after talking to them, I did agree to have a more open mind about the idea. l may or may not foil the butts at 165, but I definitely intend to foil the picnic that we will be eating for our supper, so that I can get an idea for how it is and to hopefully finish the picnic off a little sooner than it might be finished otherwise, since it is heavier than the butts, and picnics seem to typically take quite a bit more time than butts as well.

Anyway, back to the project - for those keeping track, here is my proposed shopping list for this graduation cook (actual purchases - where different from proposed - are in parentheses):

Pulled Pork Barbecue

2 Boston butts totalling at least 15 pounds (16.02 actual)
French's yellow mustard
Back-up rub (not needed - I found my Mad Hunky rub!)

Mop

Dr. Pepper
Low-sodium soy sauce (I actually ended up getting Kikkoman Ponzu - less sodium, and with a citrus kick!)
Extra virgin olive oil

Glaze

French's yellow mustard
Dark brown sugar (I ended up getting turbinado "sugar in the raw")
Apple cider vinegar

Eastern Carolina Pulled Pork Finishing Sauce

Apple cider vinegar
Beer (Shock Top Belgian White)
Salt
Crushed red pepper flakes
Ground black pepper
Dark brown sugar (ended up getting turbinado "sugar in the raw")

Fuel/Flavour

2 bags of Stubbs charcoal
2 Bags of applewood chunks

Tools/Accessories/Miscellaneous

Spray bottle
Gallon-sized ziplock bags
RubberMaid-type quart-sized container
Saran wrap
Heavy-duty aluminum foil
Basting brush

Okay, the list might seem a little anal-retentive, but a) I wanted to make an accurate account of everything and b) i'm going to be using it for future reference.

Special note: The current price for Boston butt pork shoulder roasts is 2.78$ per pound, which is going to put a severe limitation on my own future pork purchases!

More to come as it develops.... If anyone sees anything missing in my logic, let me know - but I think I'm on my way. I'm looking forward to kicking this pig ~

(later)

Okay, I have a few photos here from the beginning of the operation:

The goods for the pulled pork proper:



Our picnic shoulder for Sunday supper in the foreground, with Mad Hunky Rub, French's yellow mustard and the two butts dedicated to the graduation celebration in the background.

The Mad Hunky General Purpose Rub is the best commercial rub I've yet found, made with quality ingredients and a minimum of salt and sugar; also, Rich is a true class act, and I'm proud to call him a friend - his rub is perfect for any barbecue! I used to trip over myself futzing around trying to come up with that good, old-fashioned barbecue flavour, but no more - here it is! You can see for yourself by visiting with Rich at www.madhunkymeats.com.

As an experiment, I scored the skin and fat cap of the picnic shoulder:



The intent is to see if this helps with rendering fat, which will help baste the roast as it cooks; also, the scoring should - if I am correct, allow the rendering to go a little faster. As a bonus, I should end up with a bunch of wonderful, diamond-shaped, barbecue-flavoured cracklin's!

Here are all three roasts, patted dry with paper towels and ready to go:



Next, I slathered the roasts with yellow mustard:



And then gave them a healthy coating of Mad Hunky goodness:



Finally, I covered them loosely with Saran wrap before setting them in the refrigerator for the night:



Ready to go tomorrow - more details and photos to come!

0630 - Charcoal chimney lit! I also, put a big pan of water on in order to get it boiling so that it (the water) could be added to the water pan, then got the thermometer ready and lined up the charcoal and wood chunks:



Finally, I took a look at the pork, adding a little rub if and where needed:



0745 - Meat on! When the chimney was ready, I added the briquettes to the firebox and brought the temperature up past 212. I filled the water pan with boiling water, added the first of the applewood chunks and brought the smoker up to around 230:



The charcoal at the far right is the charcoal that was used to start the chimney. Next to it is th charcoal that had been pre-heating on the far right side of the charcoal basket until moments before, when I moved it over up against the burning charcoal and added the applewood in order to pre-heat it and get the thin, blue smoke starting.

Everything was in place, and nothing else to do, so I added a few more briquettes at the far end and put the meat was put on the grates:



I then watched as the temp settled down to about 215, then crept back up to the 230-240 range, rising and falling a bit within that range.

I’ll maintain these lower-end temperatures for a couple of hours, to get that sweet apple smoke in there, and then bump the temperature range up ten degrees or so, gradually raising the cooking temperatures to the 250-260 range, and maintain that range throughout the cook.

Music is on, sun tea is brewing and great aromas are issuing from the pit ~ can it get any better?

0900 - I added a little charcoal and apple wood; while the they brought themselves up to temperature a bit (for cleaner burning), I took the opportunity to open the smoking chamber in order to flip the fatty and the shoulder roasts over for even cooking. The rub on top (which was the fat cap-side of the roasts) had set very well, but on the bottom (grate-side) of the meat - which was now the top - a little bit of rub had come off in a couple of places. No worries, I simply brushed a thin layer of mustard on and re-applied a little bit of Mad Hunky where it was needed:



Normally, I start my pork shoulder roasts with the fat-cap down in order to prevent exactly this (later in the cook of course, the fat caps are up, in order to help baste the meat); however, today, I neglected to do so. The loss of rub was very small and if I had been cooking just for myself, I would not have bothered with the touch-up, but cooking for friends, I want to make the extra effort for top quality.

As I said, no worries - this early in the cook, it's an easy fix - and once the rub sets, it will be a non-issue.

1045 - The fatty is just about done, and things are moving long pretty well. The temperatures are staying mostly in my chosen range of 230-240, and I'll be bumping that range up to the 250-260 range once the fatty comes off.

taz - you gotta use lump charcoal- much more smokey taste

Hi, Butch - I do have some lump charcoal on hand, and it is wonderful for its hardwood sweetness; however, i elected to go with briquettes today in order to get a longer, more-consistent burn. Also, I wanted to try this Stubb's charcoal, which touts itself as being 95% hardwood, with the remainder being simply a natural, vegetable-based binder. It's been performing very well so far, and I'm getting some sweet smells from the pit. Judging how the fatty turned out, I'm also getting quite a bit of good smoke penetration and flavour!

1115 - The fatty registered 265 degrees, so I pulled it off the grate:



Things are looking pretty good, I think!

I set the fatty on a dinner plate to rest:



In the meantime, I turned the shoulder roasts over and began mopping them with my standard mop; which consists of about 1.5 cups of Dr. Pepper, 1/3 cup of low-sodium soy sauce (ponzu, in this case) and enough olive oil to brng the total mixture to 2 cups, plus a little more if it looks like it needs it. After discussing the mop with a friend, I also decided to try adding a tablespoon or so of yellow mustard, in order to see if it would help emulsify the mop a bit. Early results seem to indicate that it does indeed help the mop hold together a little better, but I will still whisk it a bit before each use.

Once the shoulder roasts were mopped and re-arranged:



I turned my attention back to our brunch, which had now been resting for about 10 minutes. I cut the fatty in half to serve, and this is what I saw:



Pretty nice results for such a small amount of effort!

As you can see, there is a beautiful smoke ring, and the fatty is cooked throughout. I probably could have let it rest another 5 or 10 minutes - because the cheese did ooze out a bit - but it was manageable. I served it up to the family, and everyone was pretty impressed with it. The maple and sage seasoning of the pork sausage worked well with the creamy, tangy cheddar cheese, allowing all of the flavours to play off each other and enhance the experience. I had managed to brush a couple of layers of the above mentioned mop on it as well, and the fatty did benefit from its sweet/savory/umami-filled ambience. The applewood smoke was a great choice for this pork project; it's effect is nice and mellow, mixing well in a sweet way with the rest of the flavours, and I am indeed a fan.

We're plugging along pretty well now, with temperatures in the 250s on average. The mop is darkening the pork a bit due to the sugar in the Dr. Pepper, but this is to be expected. At some point, I will foil the picnic roast for sure, in accordance with my experiment outlined in my opening post. Due to the time crunch, I might also foil the butts in order to see if foiling helps finish the job sooner; otherwise I might be up until 2 in the morning trying to get this done, with work the next day.

1300 - I added some charcoal and another chunk of apple as I have been doing on an as-needed basis throughout the cook; I also took a moment to turn/rotate the pork and shoot a photo:



I'm thinking that 1545 (8 hours into the cook) would be a good time to check internal temperature; if it's 165 or more, I'll foil everything up with some mop and continue the cook that way until finished. I've never foiled pork shoulder before (before it was finished), but since a lot of folks do, I am sure it will turn out just fine.

Carrying on....

Looks awesome…do you have a recipe for the fatty?

Hi, Peter - the fatty was very, very easy. I encourage you to give it a try ~

What I did with this one was to simply lay out a length of Saran wrap on a cookie sheet, then sprinkled it with a fair amount of rub. I then mixed together a chub of Jimmy Dean sage sausage with a chub of Jimmy Dean maple sausage. Next, I rolled and flattened the combined sausage out onto the Saran wrap, sprinkled it with a boatload of cheddar cheese (leaving about an inch of bare sausage (without cheese) on each "long" side and about 3 inches of bare sausage at one end. I then used the Saran wrap to help me roll up the fatty and gave the outside a good dusting of Rub. Finally, I wrapped the fatty tightly in Saran wrap, making sure that the ends were sealed in order to keep the cheese from blowing out as it cooked. I set it in the fridge overnight and smoked it along with everything else until it hit an internal temperature of 165 degrees.

Keep in mind that you can put anything you want in a fstty - your only limit is your imagination!

Heading to the home stretch, here's how the pork shoulder roasts looked at 1545:



Before foiling the roasts, I applied a final mopping to both sides; here's a shot after I flipped them over:



Next, I foiled the roasts and kept them cooking at a temperature that was a fairly-consistent 260 degrees until 1915, when I set the picnic out to rest - still foiled. I then wrapped the two butts in towels and placed them in a cooler for 2 hours:



For supper, the family and I enjoyed the picnic roast with a few sides; results, overall were very good. The pork was very close to - but not quite - "just right." It chunked and shredded pretty well, with only a little bit "stubborn meat" in the middle near the bone that gave a tough time pulling. I was only able to let it rest for a half-hour before the family demanded that I pull it and serve it, so longer resting would probably have taken care of that issue.

The flavour of the finished pulled pork that we had was outstanding, with and without the finishing sauce. The applewood smoke came through very well, there was a great smoke ring and everything that one could expect or want form barbecued pulled pork was right there. The Mad Hunky Rub and the mop worked together very nicely - a winning combination!

Speaking of the finishing sauce, when I made it for our pulled pork, I used Shock Top Belgian White (which includes coriander and orange peel in its flavour profile) as the beer component:



The results were really, really nice; maybe it was just my imagination, but it seemed to me that I could taste the difference ~ worth a try! I also used Shock Top for the finishing sauce that I made for my friends, and I am quite confident that it will be a hit.

After the two butts rested for two hours, I pulled them and bagged them into two one-gallon-sized ziplock bags for our friends. Here's one of them, fresh out of the foil:



It's hard to tell by looking at the photo, but the stainless-steel bowl holding the pork is huge. Imagine the big "popcorn bowl" that every house seems to have; this bowl dwarfs even that!

They seemed to be "finished" perfectly; the bone pulled right out cleanly:



The smoke ring was pretty good, and the apple-smoked aroma was wonderful The pork itself practically fell apart in the bowl:



I was able to get a nice shred on the pork - not too clumpy and not too stringy - it seemed to be just about right:



I snatched a small piece from each butt, just to make sure all was good, and was impressed with the sweet-smoky flavour and how it permeated throughout the pork. I did not bother with the finishing glaze, since the roasts were foiled and they didn't seem like they would benefit from it anyway - the glaze is better, I think, with a non-foiled roast or especially with ribs.

As for the foiling, I am sure that it probably helped with getting them done a little sooner than they would have finished on their own, so there is an advantage there; also, the foiling did help preserve the "colour" of the bark, rather than allowing the inevitable super-dark/almost-black bark that sometimes results from not foiling. On the other hand, it seemed that the roasts were a little too "wet" on the outside compared to what I am used to - with a softer bark - and the flavour of the pork over-all, might have been muted a bit - I cannot say for sure without a side-by-side comparison, which I will try sometime.

The only real downside to the whole thing was a common problem: with both the picnic (rested for half an hour) and the butts (rested two hours), when I opened up the roasts for pulling, some of the meat in the middle started to turn brown. It doesn't affect the flavour, but to me it is rather unappealing to look at. I'm pretty sure the that the browning is caused by the super-hot, very-moist meat hitting the air; I read it somewhere long ago (written by Danny Gaulden, if I remember correctly) and figured that 2 hours would be enough time to prevent it, but no dice. The only thing I can think of to combat this is to let the roasts rest longer and allow the internal temperature come down a bit more before opening up them up, but a lot of times this is not a feasable option.

Other than that, this was - all-in-all - a great experience and a very good pulled pork barbecue. I was quite impressed with the applewood chunks and the charcoal briquettes from Stubb's, which exceeded my expectations. Kingsford is fine - nothing wrong with it - but for just about the same price (at least where I found it at the time), I'd say that Stubb's edges out the blue bag by a bit. I am completely satisfied with this barbecue, and am looking forward to presenting it to my friends, who I am certain will enjoy it!

You, Sir, are the master...

If we were but worthy to be your students...

Heck, I just had dessert and now I want pork!

Great job, TAS

Thanks Tas! I figured it looked fairly simple. Us Canadians don't have easy access to Jimmy Dean but I'll look for it next time I get groceries in Nodak. I'll probably just make a batch with some ground pork and seasonings in the meantime. I'm thinking jalapeños or mushrooms would be a good starter for stuffing to compliment the cheese.

Thanks, everyone - I've learned a few things, but I am very far from a master!

Peter - any breakfast-type bulk sausage will work - the Jimmy Dean is simply what I had on hand - experimentation with stuffings and sausages will lead to great things!