Long weekend pork shoulder & beans

[Lightning]

We've got a long weekend here for Victoria Day so I thought I'd fire up the WSM and do a pork shoulder so I'll have meals for the next few days while I'm busy without having to do much cooking.

I picked up the pork shoulder, trimmed it up and got it seasoned last night:





I got it into the smoker early this afternoon. It was later than I intended but I'm recovering from 7 midnight shifts in a row and slept in. Oh well.



I trimmed off the protruding flap of meat - this might have been a mistake - because I thought it would finish up and dry out before the rest of the shoulder. I diced it up along with some leftover ham and a couple of cans of baked beans along with two carrots, some barbecue sauce, molasses, and maple syrup.



These went below the shoulder on the bottom grate:



They're probably going to finish up around 11 PM or midnight. But that's ok, I'll wander down to the park and see if anybody's lighting fireworks when the sun goes down and kill some time.


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[1buckie]

Good eats on the horizon!!!


Great way to unwind from a hefty string of work !!!

[Darko]

Looks great.

[Davescprktl]

Man I'm hungry!  Looks good!

[Lightning]

Thanks guys!

It took longer than I thought to cook but in the end a friend and I had a good late night meal:









And I don't have to cook again for the next couple days!


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[1buckie]

Geez....I wanna come over to your house !!!!


Looks grate!!!!!

[Travis]

Man that looks incredible.
Glad to hear you finished up the dreaded night shift. Just finished mine as well.


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[WMT]

Looks great and i like the idea of using some for baked beans also.

[Lightning]

It turned out reasonably well.  I was concerned that the shoulder would dry out after I cut that flap of meat off to put it in the beans because a lot of juice drained out of it when I began cutting.  The shoulder didn't seem any worse off but still, I'd rather not have lost that juice from inside it.  I ended up pulling the shoulder off just after midnight and shredding it as it was because I had to be up the next morning.  It could have done with some more time.  Most of it was nice and tender but some parts were still quite tough.

[greenweb]

Looks great! Few more hrs longer would have been real tender. What temp was it when you pulled it off?

[WNC]

Looks great!
I did a butt the other day and had some tough meat deep inside too, that's even after 15 hours


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[Shoestringshop]

@Lightning looks really good! What was your charcoal setup? Looks like you have another grate made a 18" under the 22"?

[jfbincypress]

@Lightning looks really good! What was your charcoal setup? Looks like you have another grate made a 18" under the 22"?

Looks like a 22" WSM...so two 22" grates.

Usually I leave 18 hours when I do my butts (or briskets, for that matter). Generally, the butts go 14-16 and the briskets go 16-18...but I always leave a few extra hours for fluctuations and stubborn cuts.

All that aside, it looks great...and I'm sure tastes wonderful.

Nice cooking, and thanks for sharing!


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[Lightning]

It is a 22 inch WSM.  I only added the lower grate when it was time to load the beans in.  Unfortunately with the midnight shift preceding this cook, my original plan to get up around 8:00 AM and the smoker going an having the pork butt in by 10:00 AM fell through and it was closer to 1:30 - 2:00 PM by the time it was started cooking.  It measured around 185 to 190 in various places when I probed it with a handheld meat thermometer before I took it off and gave it a short rest before pulling the meat so it really needed more time to come up a bit higher and to have the connective tissue break down more.  It tasted good, that's for sure, and most of the meat was quite tender, but there definitely were some tough spots still.  I think this one might have been one of those difficult pieces of meat.  The other shoulder I did last year went beautifully.

One of the things I'm planning to do this summer is a brisket while I'm on vacation, and I'll make sure to block off adequate time to do it.  Adequate time is what I should have had for the shoulder but the shiftwork circumstances surrounding that really derailed that idea.  Note to self:  Working six night shifts in a row, playing in a football practice, then a seventh night shift = very tired and a lot of sleep after.

The charcoal setup I've been using in the 22" WSM is kind of a rectangular formation of unlit coal from front to back which is set off by pouring a row of lit coals from a chimney along the front of it.  It's the same basic principle of a C-shaped snake turned into a wide, short rectangle.  It works well but after about 10 hours or so needs to be stoked with new charcoal.  I should give the C-snake another shot sometime.

[jfbincypress]

I just fill the coal compartment with a full bag of Kingsford blue bag, take out 10 coals and light them in a chimney.

While they get hot, I wedge in 4-6 large chunks of whatever wood I'll be using based on the meat I'm cooking.

Then once the coals are good and hot, I make a well in the center of the coals and throw those 10 coals in the middle.

I open the top vent 100%, and close the bottom vents to 20% each until put temps hit 180, then I close them to 10% and once they stabilize and depending on outside temperatures (both Houston and Costa Rica are HOT usually), I close the vents with the absolute minimal slit opening.

This generally will hold the pit around 230 for up to 18 hours with no attention to the coals, vents, or much of anything else.

Have I ever mentioned how much I love the WSM?


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