Just Porkin'

If there was a heaven, this is what it'd smell like

I have a lot of weaknesses, most centering around food, hence my svelte body image and kitchen full of cookware. One of the biggest of food borne weakness is the smell of a pit with some sort of meat slowly roastifying over a bed of glowing hardwood coals. If I were that Pitmaster, I would charge folks for just hanging out and basking in the smoky love emanating from my hardworking pit.

As for the meat, pork shoulder/butt is my pick. Practically bullet proof, flavorful, and adapts to many dishes from burritos to Cuban sandwiches – hell, might ever be good as a topping for that ice cream. Then there is just the plain old ordinary pulled pork sandwich. I'm not going to get into an argument over sauce for the sandwich because I believe if properly seasoned to begin with, it doesn't need sauce. When I hit a barbecue place I want any sauce on the side so I can taste the meat on its own to ensure that the sauce isn't being used to cover up shitty barbecue. Life's to short to be eating McRib style BBQ, plain and simple.

Small pork roast with rub applied

To avoid shittyness, it is imperative to have good meat, a good rub, and patience. The meat can be bought at the market preferably a market with a high turnover so you aren't picking up last months super sale shoulder. Be even better if you butchered your own hogs, but most HOAs would wet their pants if you started keeping pigs, besides I have a husky and he'd eat the damn things before I could. Then there's the rub.

I'll put a recipe for a basic rub at the end, but use some sense – taste, add, taste. If you don't taste your spices you will never develop the touch needed to make good anything. And remember to taste your end product – it'll be strong, but that is okay as that flavor has a lot of meat to permeate. At this point you might even consider injecting the meat thereby introducing more flavor and moisture to the heart of the matter, but more on that another time. “Rub” isn't just a catchy name, it is the way the spices are applied. You could slather the meat with mustard to keep the process moist and paste like, but I prefer to sprinkle on copious amounts of rub and drizzle some olive oil to create a paste that is easier to massage into the meat. You'll want full coverage and time for the rub to do its thing, that is wrap it in foil and drop it in the fridge for a couple hours or overnight.

Hunk o' smoked po'k

Fire up the old smoke bucket, and when the coals* are all little chunks of white hot hardwood drop them in the grill for indirect cooking. If you don't know what indirect cooking is at this stage of the game there may be little help for you, but as the word implies, coals on either side of the grill, meat in the center. Normally I'd put a pan of beer in between the coals, but since I start the meat still wrapped in the foil, this is no big deal. I let the meat roast for a couple of hours in its own juices, then open the foil, drop chunks of hickory, mesquite or fruit wood on the coals and close the grill up so the smoke can do its thing. I usually start with hickory or mesquite, then finish with some fruit wood.

Here's a basic rub, the bulk is paprika and brown sugar. The best thing about making your own rub is you control the amount of salt and other ingredients, whereas the commercial brands are sodium heavy and have unpronounceable things in them.

1/4 cup dark brown sugar

1/2 cup sweet paprika

1Tbs kosher salt

1 Tbs granulated garlic powder

1 Tbs granulated onion powder

1 Tbs chili powder

2 Tsp cayenne pepper

And make sure you taste this and adjust to your liking, then smear the meat with it (you can add cooking oil to give it a more paste'like texture – you'll want a lot of the rub on the meat. 

* I prefer "Mr. Stubb's" Hardwood charcoal. I used to use lump charcoal, but between the nails, rocks, and hug chunks of tree limbs in the natural hardwood bags, I reverted to regular, albeit hardwood, charcoal.