First pork shoulder on the egg

jerryb78 · April 2014

I did my first pork shoulder on the egg yesterday. I give myself an A- for the quality of the final product and a C- on timing.

I ended up getting a bone-in picnic roast because I couldn't find anything resembling a decent butt at the grocery store last weekend. Next time I'll probably hit another store and get a butt so I can try that out and see the difference. I used the remaining Meathead's Memphis Dust (recipe from amazingribs) that I made for my ribs last week and rubbed it down around 10PM the night before. I got started cooking a little later in the morning than I hoped and didn't get the shoulder on the grill until about 8AM. I figured that if it didn't seem like it was going to be done in time that I could wrap it and speed things up a bit. Anyway, I got the fire stabilized and threw in a few chunks of apple and set it up in a pretty typical indirect cook. (PS legs up with a water/drip pan on it)

Things progressed nicely through the first several hours, but early in the afternoon I hit the stall pretty hard. At this point I probably *should* have wrapped it right away but due to my inexperience I wasn't sure if I should try waiting it out or not. A few hours later (and zero additional degrees on the thermometer) I had my answer. I got it wrapped at that point and things started moving along, but not fast enough to be done for our usual dinner time. So, the kids got hot dogs for dinner last night and I waited until about 8:30PM to eat. No worries, they'll get more than their share of it the next few days! I was getting pretty hungry by that point, but I'd be damned if I was going to put all that effort into a cook and not get to try it that same day. I pulled it at 200 and it shredded quite easily.

I will repeat a comment that I saw another person make on this board recently: I've probably been ruined for most pulled pork from restaurants. Given that there's probably a lot of room left for improvement in my technique, the result was amazing. I can't wait until I get *good* at doing this. The bark was very flavorful and the meat was tender. The roast actually kind of started slumping towards the end. I'm not sure if this is normal with a picnic or if it just needs to be tied next time.

Anyway, I learned a little bit about timing a long cook and got myself a pile of delicious pulled pork. I'll call this one a win. Thanks everyone for the great info that I've found in the forum.

TexanOfTheNorth · April 2014

Looks great. Keep in mind that you ftc for several hours so planning an early finish is often a good idea to avoid timing issues

ChadEggHeadEst2014 · April 2014

Looks better than my first time Easter dinner. I did not smoke it long enough 7 hours and had to eat chopped pork instead of pulled pork. We can never learn if we don't make mistakes. I talked to a guy that said he had his for ten years and he is still learning.

jerryb78 · April 2014

Absolutely Chad. My wife always tells me that I'm too critical of my own cooking, but I don't see it that way. Sometimes you hit a home run without even trying and sometimes you strike out despite your best efforts. The only way to get better is to look at your own work honestly and try to figure out what you can do better next time.

TonyA · April 2014

Nice looking picnic. They tend to have a lot lighter colored meat (many people say sweater) than a butt. If i have enough people to cook for I like to do a faux shoulder ( a butt and a picnic) pull it all at once and blend together.

First pork shoulder on the egg

Comments

Categories