My first low&slow picnic shoulder, results

egghead2004

Well, Saturday was the day I was not going to be home all day and wanted a nice pork should ready to eat when I came home. I also want to show the in-laws who think I'm a lunatic for spending $700 for the egg.
I bought a 7.5 # picnic shoulder Friday night and seasoned with salt, pepper, fresh minced garlic, Adobo, and olive oil (typical seasonings my inlaws use for pork)
Started the BGE @ 10:30pm and was able to get a stable 225 temp by 11pm.
12am - checked dome temp, still 225.
3am - placed shoulder skin side down in BGE. Is skin supposed to be up or down?
7am - pleased to see dome was @ 225 still and internal was 119.
8:30 am - Just as I was leaving, dome temp dropped to 185!! Had to open egg and distribute coals around and restart fire. Now I'm not so confident, looks like pizza tonight.
9am - 5pm thinking about how nice it would be to eat some pork tonight.
6pm - pulled into the drivway and upon exiting the vehicle could smell pork and garlic in the air!
6:01 - BGE dome temp 275 ........internal temp 198! perfect!!
6:05 - pulled from grill, coverd in foil/towel and stored in cooler. Internal peaked at 200.
7:30 - Inlaws showed up, my wife had the plantains, avacados and rice all ready. I unwrapped the piggie (171 internal) and pulled the bone right out. I used my bbq tongs to pull the meat and serve on a platter.
Everyone's jaws dropped when the saw how this thing fell apart. No meat on the bone, no fat deposits, no dry spots. The meat was gone in 15 minutes.
Now my mother in law has been cooking shoulders for YEARS. It is her "signature" dish. She told me later that she had never had pork this good in her life. mother in law and compliment have never been in the same sentence in our 10 year relationship.
The rest of my wife's family is still raving about this and telling friends and workmates about the funny looking grill I bought. I think they are coming around.[p][p]Thanks BGE and thanks Chet and Katman for your input last week. I have pictures, I'll download them tonight after I'm done with my BGE chicken wings.

Smoked Signals

egghead2004,
Today on Lifetime ... "The Big Green Egg - Bringing families together and dinner to the table" [p]Stay tuned today as another crazy son-in-law eggomaniac brings home the bacon and amazes his In-Laws. [p]Well be back right after this message from the pork industry....[p]:)[p]

Unknown

egghead2004,
Glad to hear that everything came out well and the that mom-in-law was happy but I gotta ask, why did you start your fire at 10:30 at night when you did put the meat on until 3 in the morning?[p]Beers
Matt.

egghead2004

South O,
I figured 15-16 hours for a 7.5# bone in shoulder would be the cooking time. I was not going to be home until 6pm, so working backwards that would be a 3am start time. I had a long day ahead of me so there was no way I was going to get up @ 2am, start the fire and try to get it stable at that hour. So I started the fire early, got up at 3, popped it on the grill and went right back to bed. Seeing the dome @ 225 after 4 hrs was nice and I didn't wake up thinking about it in bed all night either.

Unknown

egghead2004, man it flat does a heart good to hear such positive feed back...I knew you would love and just sorry for the iffy start but you handled it and all is more that well it seems. got me dreaming of my traditional Turkey Day 20 lb'r.

BucsFanJim

egghead2004,
Sounds great! I've never done a shoulder but I would imagine the skin side would be up. Just guessing on that one.

egghead2004

BucsFanJim,
I don't know either. I thought I had read skin down somewhere, then I read a post this morning that said skin up? I can't imagine it being better just by flipping it over, but who knows, right?

Unknown

<p />I did five whole legs over the weekend. I trimmed the skin off all five to get more bark. Total cook time was 25 hours. For this kind of a cook I use my FE instead of the
ceramic cooker. Picture of the legs just before the end of the cook.

Hammer

egghead2004,
Sounds like a sucessful cook, and a way to get the mother in law thinking positive thoughts.
Congratulations!
Hammer