4th of July BBQ - the Shoulder Series

For the 4th of July we got a whole bone in pork shoulder from Sea Breeze Farm over on Vashon Island. The plan was to smoke it and make it into pulled pork for sandwiches at our barbecue.




Of course once we got it home we realized there was no way it was all going to fit on the Weber grill I use for smoking. I know a lot of people have smokers and this might have fit on one of those but my Weber does a more than adequate job at about a third to a fourth the price. You do have to be a bit more attentive to keep an eye on the heat but after a couple of times you get the hang of it and it's not that difficult.




After removing what was probably the shoulder blade I then attempted to determine how to break the shoulder down into a couple of smaller pieces. I consulted my CIA text to figure out where the picnic and boston butt were and to see if I could figure out where the joint was.




I was close, but sadly I missed the joint by about three inches. So I had to do a little surgery to make my way up the bone to find the joint and once I found it I was able to pop it and make a pretty easy cut through the shoulder. The boston butt end was totally intact while the picnic end bore the brunt of the surgery. So instead of sewing it up I broke that down into a few pieces. Two large ones for smoking and a smaller piece to make rillettes.




After applying a homemade rub I went about smoking it over some applewood, which I usually use for smoking bacon as well. The two pieces of the picnic were smoked together for about 8 hours and the larger butt piece was smoked for over twelve. The first time I smoked pork shoulder I was excited just to get a smoke ring but now I'm more excited when the smoke ring goes deeper.




We then shredded the still very warm pork and dressed it with a tomato barbecue sauce that we got out of the Gourmet Cookbook. The pork was kept warm in a slow cooker and after guests arrived we loaded it onto a bun with the coleslaw from the great book Screen Doors and Sweet Tea. It was served with potato salad, molasses baked beans, Santa Maria style beans, and a quinoa pesto salad.