Favorite Fall Feast: Pulled Pork

 

I know this is usually a "summer" default, but for some reason, I love to make pulled pork in the fall. I think part of it has to do with the smell - you can go outside, get the grill all set up, and you have that nice fall smell surrounding you. It gets blended with the smoke throughout the day, and then the scent of the pork later on, and it's just intoxicating! Also, a big part of it may be that it's just not so hot, so you can spend some time out by the grill tending to your fire without the sun beating down on you and it's just all a bit more relaxing.

Pulled pork is an exercise in patience and quality of ingredients more than any sort of culinary skill. The patience comes from resisting that urge to lift up and check on the pork every 20 minutes or so, resisting the urge to take the meat off the grill too early and dive right in, resisting the urge to dig into the meat as soon as it comes off the fire. And since you're using really just one ingredient - the pork - you have to choose wisely. Get a good cut. It doesn't have to be huge, but it should have a nice thick fat cap. If you can find it, free range pork taste the best. A happy animal is a yummy animal.

Pulled Pork
3 - 4 lb pork shoulder
3 tbsp cajun seasoning
3 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp salt
1 tbsp pepper
2 tsp brown sugar

3 cups wood chips, soaked in water for 30 minutes
aluminum foil
drip tray, filled 1/4 in high with water

Get things started by firing up your grill, set up for indirect heat (one bunch of coals on each side), and let it come to heat. Let your pork rest out of the fridge and come to room temperature during this time. Let the wood chips soak in water during this time as well.

Combine the olive oil, cajun season, salt, pepper, and brown sugar together in a bowl and whisk until a nicely combined paste forms. Spread the paste all over the pork, really rubbing it in. Get under the fat cap where possible, and make sure to really cover all sides of the flesh.

Create your smoker packets by placing a handful of wood chips into the center of a piece of aluminum. Fold the aluminum over and close it up. Then, poke 5 - 6 holes on one side. Do this until you have 6 packets made up.

Place your drip tray into the middle of the grill between the coals. The water in here will help to regulate the temperature in the grill throughout the cooking process. Place a wood chip packet on top of the coals on each side. Then, put the grate down and place the pork shoulder on top, fat cap up.

Cover the grill, and regulate the temperature to around 250 - 300 degrees. Soon you'll see plumes of smoke coming up. Once that smoke starts to peter off, after about 45 minutes, replace the spent wood chip packets with new ones. Repeat this until you've used up all your wood chips.

Let the pork roast in your grill smoker low and slow for about 5 hours. If you need to add new briquettes to keep the heat up, do this at the same time you're replacing your wood chip packets to avoid letting the heat out too often.

At about hour 5, wrap the whole shoulder up in aluminum foil and then let roast in the foil for the last hour.

Finally, when you've roasted the pork for a good six hours, remove it from the heat and let it rest in its foil packet for about 20 - 30 minutes. Then, remove it from the foil packet. You should be able to just pull out the bone in the middle as the meat will be so tender. Use two forks to pull the pork apart into strands. Douse with barbeque sauce, and dig in!

Note: if your grill loses too much temperature and you can't get it back up, it's okay to move the pork to the oven after you've gotten all of your smoke penetration done. I've had to do this a few times around hour 4, and there was no problem at all. You still get that smokey flavor since all of it is imparted in the first few hours, so don't sweat!