Smoking a pork shoulder

Yesterday was my second attempt at smoking a pork shoulder in order to make pulled pork. My first attempt was about a month ago and that took a bit longer than expected, meaning that after 10 hours in the BBQ the meat was still not done, but I was, since it was 2 AM and bed called. This time around I planned it better, so the meat went in the BBQ at noon.

Using the Minion method for the coal fire.

The shoulder was rubbed in a simple mixture of salt, pepper, sugar, dried bell pepper and chili pepper. Normally I slather the meat in mustard first, which helps the rub to stick better, but since this actually doesn't add any flavour to the final product and only makes it all a lot messier, I skipped that this time around. Wrap it all in cling film and leave it in the fridge for a few hours.

When smoking a pork shoulder, the time it takes can be deceiving. My two attempts have used a shoulder weighing in at 1.5 kgs, so it's quite a small packet but it will still need lots of hours in the barbecue to reach the wanted temperature. The reason for this is called the temperature plateau, which is when the internal temperature of the shoulder simply stops rising, and might even drop a few degrees, and is thought to be due to a conversion process where tough collagen turns into soft gelatin, which can take a couple of hours.

Everybody plots graphs while barbecuing, right?!

Due to that, I cooked at a higher temperature this time (150°C) compared to last time (125°C) in order to speed up the cooking time a bit.That might of course have an impact on the end result, but I rather do that and have a baseline to compare to in the future.

8.5 hours later.

This time around it took 8.5 hours to reach the wanted internal temperature of 94°C, so the shoulder was wrapped in tinfoil in order to let it rest for an hour so that the moisture in the meat could redistribute through out the meat.

A nice red hue due to the smoke.

Use two forks and work those forearm muscles by pulling the pork to shreds. If cooking a larger or multiple shoulders, there are actually attachements to your power drill to do this process, since it can be rather strenuous work.

Ready for consumption.

So was it any good then? It was indeed and had a nice smokey flavour, but I would like it to be a tad bit more moist next time, so I might have another go at a lower temperature. But I'm not sure that it was 8.5 hours good though...