Today, I'm doing one of those long cooks. I was getting a bit sick of doing chicken every week, so I'd asked my wife to get me something different and she's got a big hunk of Pork leg for me to smoke. She wanted pulled pork. I had told her that according to AmazingRibs.com, pork shoulder (or butt) is the best cut for pulled pork, but still, this should be fine.
I was a little busy when I fired up the pit just after 10am, as I was also live hosting my monthly radio show The Chill Factor. So, yeh I was running back and forth from the turntables to the BBQ for the first hour, until the show finished. A friend of mine had given me a bunch of charcoal to try, so I filled up the chimney with half charcoal and half heat beads. The charcoal had that nice "campfire" smell to it, thought was a little smokey initially.
For smoke, I decided to use Apple pellets with this cook and around 10:40am, the meat finally went on. I noticed that the charcoal was also causing the BBQ to run real hot, like 400F. By coincience, the meat was too big for the Smokey Joe's lid to close properly, but that helped to disperse some of the heat and bought the temperature down to 250F. I thought I was also going to cook some bacon, so I prepared some wood chips for that, but ended up using those to start a little fire / flare up to do some toasted marshmallows with my son. So good, but so bad too :)
One hour into the cook and the internal temperature was at 39C and one of the fat sides was scorched, probably from the initial heat, so I flipped the leg around. I also based it with it's own juices / water pan and spritzed it with some apple cider vinegar.
At 12:50pm, the internal temperature was 69C. At 1:40pm, the internal temperature looked to be stuck at 72C, so I double foiled it and I also had to add more heat beads as the charcoal was completely used up. At 2:20pm, it was spot on 77C. I pushed at it with my tongs and this one corner, the meat just fell off. I grabbed a chunk of this and ate it. My god it was amazing and I thought, this is why I BBQ. The middle of the leg was still a little tough, so I decided to leave it on longer. At 3:00pm, I did the usual spritzing.
At this point, I feel asleep on the deck outside, so I didn't get to check the meat til 4:50pm. The internal temperature had hit 91C and the outer juicy bit I talked about earlier was now dried out :( however, the inner bits look very juicy and the fat side was jiggling nicely. I took the meat off to rest and waited til dinner time.
The day before, I'd gone to Super Butcher at Birkdale and looked at their nice selection of meats. I picked up a lamb rack and also noticed they stocked all the Stubb's range of sauces that I've been finding hard to get online. I picked up their Original BBQ sauce, which is a very light, tangy and went fantastic with the pork. I also ended up having pork the Monday night for dinner (my wife cooked it in with fried rice, which made it lose all the smokey flavour - boo hiss) and then Tuesday for lunch I had some more on a roll with cheese and gherkins. Oh and that sauce :)
All and all it was great to cook a big bit of meat, as not only do you get a great dinner out of it, but you also get a couple of other meals too.
I was a little busy when I fired up the pit just after 10am, as I was also live hosting my monthly radio show The Chill Factor. So, yeh I was running back and forth from the turntables to the BBQ for the first hour, until the show finished. A friend of mine had given me a bunch of charcoal to try, so I filled up the chimney with half charcoal and half heat beads. The charcoal had that nice "campfire" smell to it, thought was a little smokey initially.
For smoke, I decided to use Apple pellets with this cook and around 10:40am, the meat finally went on. I noticed that the charcoal was also causing the BBQ to run real hot, like 400F. By coincience, the meat was too big for the Smokey Joe's lid to close properly, but that helped to disperse some of the heat and bought the temperature down to 250F. I thought I was also going to cook some bacon, so I prepared some wood chips for that, but ended up using those to start a little fire / flare up to do some toasted marshmallows with my son. So good, but so bad too :)
One hour into the cook and the internal temperature was at 39C and one of the fat sides was scorched, probably from the initial heat, so I flipped the leg around. I also based it with it's own juices / water pan and spritzed it with some apple cider vinegar.
At 12:50pm, the internal temperature was 69C. At 1:40pm, the internal temperature looked to be stuck at 72C, so I double foiled it and I also had to add more heat beads as the charcoal was completely used up. At 2:20pm, it was spot on 77C. I pushed at it with my tongs and this one corner, the meat just fell off. I grabbed a chunk of this and ate it. My god it was amazing and I thought, this is why I BBQ. The middle of the leg was still a little tough, so I decided to leave it on longer. At 3:00pm, I did the usual spritzing.
At this point, I feel asleep on the deck outside, so I didn't get to check the meat til 4:50pm. The internal temperature had hit 91C and the outer juicy bit I talked about earlier was now dried out :( however, the inner bits look very juicy and the fat side was jiggling nicely. I took the meat off to rest and waited til dinner time.
The day before, I'd gone to Super Butcher at Birkdale and looked at their nice selection of meats. I picked up a lamb rack and also noticed they stocked all the Stubb's range of sauces that I've been finding hard to get online. I picked up their Original BBQ sauce, which is a very light, tangy and went fantastic with the pork. I also ended up having pork the Monday night for dinner (my wife cooked it in with fried rice, which made it lose all the smokey flavour - boo hiss) and then Tuesday for lunch I had some more on a roll with cheese and gherkins. Oh and that sauce :)
All and all it was great to cook a big bit of meat, as not only do you get a great dinner out of it, but you also get a couple of other meals too.