smoking Duane's Adventures in Smoking

Sorellina

Sorellina

Ciao all-

Duane spent a lot of the recent Ontario Civic Holiday babysitting his smoker. He wanted to do something big with it and settled on a large pork shoulder for pulled pork. Not wanting to devote a lot of fuel to one thing, he also smoked 2 racks of pork ribs we had in the freezer. Finally, he decided to take the popper rack he got for Father's Day out for a test drive by making bacon-wrapped jalapeno poppers for the first time. These photos tell the story.

5:00am and ready to fire up the smoker

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Pork shoulder and ribs ready for smoking. The shoulder has a mustard rub and the ribs have a different dry rub. Duane applied both of these rubs the night before. I can get specifics if people are interested.

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Ribs went onto the bottom rack and the shoulder went on the top. This is a large-sized smoker that can also be used as a grill. It makes sense to max it out since the same amount of fuel is required regardless.

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For fuel, Duane used a combination of natural charcoal and hickory chunks that he soaked overnight. Here is the pork shoulder 3 hours after starting. The ribs are about ready to come off.

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He cooked the pork shoulder a total of 10 hours at 200-225F, turning every 2 hours. This is the finished pork shoulder, ready for pulling. It had a really nice bark on it.

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Here's how it looks partially pulled apart and another photo of the shredded pork, ready for sandwiches. We had this with some Stampede Barbeque Sauce that I can every year using my tomatoes and Duane's chilies on crusty Italian rolls. And beer, of course. The flavour of this pork was incredible. There was no need to drown it in barbeque sauce. I only put 250ml into this casserole of meat. We had so much left over, I parceled out a few good-sized packages using the FoodSaver.

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These jalapeno poppers were just incredible. This was his first time making them, so he only made a couple, but they're a winner. They were cooked a total of 1 hour 45 minutes. They're filled with cream cheese lightly spiced with roasted Anaheims and wrapped with thick-sliced maple bacon, a Canadian specialty. With the bacon wrapped around them, they didn't fit into the holes on the rack, but that was just fine.

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Very nice test drive! I like rub on everything, but on butts I found that a nice yellow mustard slather really makes an amazing bark. I know it sounds weird, but a lot of people use this technique. However when I slather I usually only turn the pork 1 time after 9-10 hours when the bark is fully cooked. Here is a great website that has some info.

Link to Pork Butt slather technique
 
I always use a slather it helps to hold the rub and the vinegar from the mustard tenderizes - sorry I didnt click the link if I am overstating what was mentioned
 
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