We’re cooking for the Pleasant Grove Church May Festival again this year. Nothing fancy just hot dogs, hamburgers and BBQ. Hardly worth wearing a chef’s jacket for this event, but we’ve done it for about 15 years, so . . .
I decided that I would liven things up by smoking a pork shoulder for the event. Further down on this page are the results of our first effort with the Weber Bullet: a pork shoulder that looked great but was really fat. I paid $1.95 a pound at the supermarket for a 6 pound shoulder that yielded less than 2 pounds of barely edible meat. It was awful.
This time I bought a well husbanded boneless pork shoulder from our local Organic Butcher. This shoulder, from a farm in Pennsylvania, came in at 8.5 pounds and went for $6.00 a pound! TLW always says that Mr. Arbuckle was right: “you get what you pay for.” My experience is otherwise with most food products described as organic. The only exception, to date, is meat.
I brought the hunk home and vacuum-marinated it overnight in Scott’s Barbecue Sauce, as before. I then got up early the next morning and started the smoke at 0730. 13.5 hours later, the shoulder’s temp hit 200F as I took it off to cool. It shredded effortlessly and has great color and a nice smoke ring. Above all, the meat is as lean, moist and tasty as this cut can get. Yield? 4.2 pounds. I threw away at most a half pound as too fat-ladened.
Bargain pull pork sandwiches coming up this Saturday. Meat and charcoal: $65. . . .yet sandwiches are going for $2.50 each. Maybe Mr. Arbuckle will show up.
Notes:
The Organic Butcher has an informative Web site at: theorganicbutcher.com.
The Weber Bullet, at least at our location, needs to be more mobile. So a trip to the hardware store and we have . . .
Tags: pork shoulder