Decided to smoke a pork shoulder yesterday, but since my wife had an evening appointment I asked if the butcher could cut one in half for me. It ended up weighing just over 5 lbs so fairly small but perfect for what I needed. I had setup the WSM ahead of time and essentially just needed to trim and season the shoulder before slappin' it on the grill.
Everything went exactly according to plan as it always does... let meat sit at room temp for about 20min, inject the crap outta the thing until it will take no more liquid, then allow to sit for another 20min. I then transfer the shoulder into a SS serving pan where it is dried off completely with paper towels. Next step is to coat the meat in EVOO and apply the rub - in this case I went with a mix of Simply Marvelous Sweet Seduction and Yardbird.
Now here's where things get bat shit crazy... I slapped the "mini" butt onto the WSM at 10am Sharp yesterday morning thinking I would be able to eat a late supper about 7 or 8 o'clock... at about the 5 hours mark it hit a stall at 164 Deg. and sat there for about 45min to an hour, then started creeping up again until it hit 173 Deg. Once it hit 173 it literally did not move for 2.5 hours!! By the time I got the meat off, let it rest for an hour, and then pulled and plated it was 2 AM!!!
I cannot understand the logic of how such a small piece of meat could take 15 hours on the Smoker!!
I usually do up 7 or 8 lb shoulders and I don't think I've ever had a single one go past maybe 12 hours tops...
In the end it was well worth the wait!! The bark came out really nice with a bit or crispiness on the outside and the smoke really got in there nicely as well
Cheers for looking!