We purchased a smoker similar to this one on sale a couple of years ago and we have used it off and on with great success. Every time we use it, we wonder WHY we don’t use it more often! I love the fact that the smoker is gas…it makes it fairly easy to control the temperature of the smoker…love that!
This week, we smoked ribs and a 7 pound pork butt (it was our first crack at smoking this cut of pork). The ribs were delicious and the pork butt was FABULOUS. The pork butt was not too smoky…just kissed with smoke and it was so juicy. The bone literally ejected itself right out of the meat. The “bark” was perfect and the finishing sauce…oh my…tasty and very unique too! Honestly, I think it was some of the best pulled pork that I have ever had.
I have posted photos and detailed instructions below so that you can make your own fabulous pork. (I am posting this partly for my own sake…because I am going to NEED to make this again sometime and I want to remember how we did it). ; )
(Please excuse the poor photo…hee hee…it is important to note that the dark areas are not burned…the darkness is called “bark”…the bark adds to the flavor of the pork…so yummy!!). : D
Inject: A full 24 hours before we smoked our pork, I removed the pork from the package and rinsed it. I then patted it down with paper towels. I decided to inject the meat to add moisture and flavor. This is what I used: About a cup of apple Juice, a dash of apple cider vinegar, a few sprinkles of cinnamon and a dash of worcestershire sauce. I used our meat injector to inject the juice mixture directly into the meat several times on all sides.
Rub: I then quickly mixed together my rub. My favorite rub recipe for pork is from this book (I’m not sure that I want to post the exact recipe because of copyright issues)…it’s a great rub…chili powder, paprika, cumin, garlic powder, cinnamon, etc. etc. etc. Use your favorite pork rub. I would use a rub that you mix together yourself. Purchased rubs often have A LOT of salt and when you smoke pork, you need to COAT the meat with rub…if you use a rub that is too salty, your finished product might taste like a salt lick. ; ) I used less than half of the salt that was called for in the recipe that I chose. When the spice rib was all mixed up, I LIBERALLY applied the rub to the pork on all sides…you really want a very good coating. When the meat was coated, I wrapped the pork tightly in clear wrap a few times and popped it into the fridge sitting in a pan (to collect any leaks).
Soak: We used mesquite chunks and apple wood chips. We soaked about 8 or 9 chunks of mesquite and several handfuls of chips in a bucket of water.
Set Up: We set up the smoker so that it would be ready to roll the following morning.
We started working on the last minute prep work at about 7:00 a.m. the next day. We wrapped up 3 chunks of mesquite and a large handful or so of apple wood chips tightly in foil and we poked about 3 holes into the foil. We preheated our smoker to around 225 degrees and we added our wood chip packet (with the holes facing up) to the designated area in our smoker. We filled the water pan. As soon as the initial big white plume of smoke had died down, we added our meat. We put a meat thermometer into the pork butt (we were careful not to touch the bone). We have two levels in our smoker so we put the pork butt on the bottom rack (fat side UP) and a rack of ribs on the top rack (we had rubbed the ribs the night before). We opened up the vent at the top of the smoker all of the way. We checked the smoker once in a while to make sure that the water pan was full and the temp was where it needed to be (between 225 and 250 degrees). We also basted the ribs with a mixture of apple juice with a bit of olive oil from time to time. We added a total of three packets of chips/chunks during the smoking process…when one packet would finish smoking, we would then add another packet. When the smoke was too intense, we opened the bottom hatch to allow some of the smoke to escape that way. After we used up the three packets, we just allowed the meat to continue to cook without smoke. The ribs were done just in time for lunch (convenient, I know…hee hee). ; D The ribs smoked for around 5 hours. We basted them with a mixture of one part apple juice to one part BBQ sauce about 1/2 hour before removing them from the smoker. The pork butt took about 10 hours to smoke. We removed the pork butt from the smoker when the internal temp of the pork was 190 degrees (if we had removed the pork when it was at a lower internal temp, the pork would have been cook through but it would not have been “shred-able”).
We allowed the pork to rest for about 1/2 hour before we started to pull it apart in one of those large disposable aluminum pans. I made a quick finishing sauce while the pork was resting. I found a recipe online that sounded tasty and then I tweaked it to suit our own tastes…the sauce was delish! Here’s the recipe:
1 cup apple cider vinegar
4 – 5 Tbls. mustard (regular yellow mustard or dijon mustard)
3 – 6 Tbls. REAL maple syrup (the amount of syrup you add will depend upon how sweet you would like your sauce to be)
2 tsp. worchestershire sauce
1 tsp. hot sauce
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp. pork rub
Dash of salt and pepper
Add ingredients to your blender and blend. You can store this sauce in a jar in your fridge. This is a thin sauce…it’s not supposed to be thick like a bottled BBQ sauce. : )
After we pulled the pork apart, we added a bit of the finishing sauce…not a lot…just a tad and then mixed it in. We then added more sauce to each sandwich. A little goes a long way.
Oh my goodness. Crazy good.
Would anybody like a sandwich? ; D
God bless,
Tera
