Cooking Pork with Rub on It
Overall GRILLING BASICS are covered here.
Overall SMOKING BASICS? Oh, they are covered here.
Pork. So good.
For each cut, we’ll offer some suggestions on applying the Rub and actually cooking the cut.
Click on your favorite kind of pork and read away:
Ribs
You will need these non-edible items:
All the stuff in Smoking Basics
A spray bottle suitable for food products
A bristle brush suitable for food products
Kitchen shears
A rib rack if you're cooking more than a couple slabs
On the food front, you will need:
Ribs (see below)
Midyett Premium Rub
Barbecue sauce (I like a Western Carolina sauce)
Yellow mustard
Apple cider vinegar
Apple juice
About the ribs themselves
Spare ribs are available a couple of ways:
With the St Louis cut, the "tip" of each rack of ribs is cut off, along with the flap of meat on the back of the rack ("skirt meat") and the flap of meat at the end of the rack (I call it "flap meat"). Nice and clean looking (yay), no tips or bits to eat (boo).
If it doesn't say "St Louis cut" on the label, and if it isn't a squarish looking slab, you probably have a full rack of ribs.
Look for a wide, curved expanse along one of the long sides of the slab.
That's the tip.
Tips are great.
The "skirt meat and flap meat" should never even make it to the table. You get to eat that at the grill (way before the rest of your ribs are done).
Finally, baby back ribs are small, neat little slabs from a different part of the pig. Some people prefer them because baby backs are very tender. I don't like them as much as regular ribs. They are quite lean and cook faster than regular ribs, so keep that in mind if that's the way you decide to go.
If you don't cook baby backs or St Louis cut, you're going to trim the slabs.
Here's a reasonable tutorial how to do that.
You may find a "silvery" membrane on the back of your rib racks. Some people remove it (I do not).
I recommend you trim before cooking, not after, for two reasons:
1. Tips cook differently than the rest of the rack. Fattier, way less likely to dry out. Better if you can move them around separate from the more finicky St Louis-part of the slab.
2. I want all the rub and spray and sauce on the ends of the ribs and the tips.
Preparing the meat
Slather the ribs and tips lightly with mustard on both sides. The mustard keeps the Rub on the ribs, and you won't taste it in the end.
Coat both sides of each slab or tip completely with Rub.
The Rub is formulated such that the meat won't turn out overly salty or peppery. If a complete coating makes you nervous, try coating one side completely.
Mix the apple cider vinegar and apple juice to taste and put it in the spray bottle. You can add soda pop to it if you like. I go more vinegary, but you might like a sweeter mix.
Preparing the smoker
Smoking Basics covers the smoking setup, but rib temperatures are a little different.
Shoot for 250°F-275°F. No lower. Higher can work, but less margin for error the hotter you get.
Cooking the ribs
Cooking time is going to depend on your smoker's starting temperature.
At 250°F, you're looking at about five hours.
Within the total time, we'll have three periods of time to consider:
1. Initial Smoke (about 3/5 of your total time on the smoker)
2. Foil Wrap (about 1/5 of your total time)
3. Final Cook and Dressing (about 1/5 of your total time)
You'll see variations of this method on the Internet if you search for "3 2 1 method of smoking ribs."
Many of them will call for 225°F smoker temp, with 3hrs Initial Smoke, 2hrs Foil Wrap, and 1hr Final Cook and Dressing.
I think:
a) 225°F is too low for ribs, and
b) 2hrs in foil is way too long. They get soft, and I like a little tooth to the meat.
When your smoker is stable at 250°F-275°F, get the ribs on. Flat on the grill if you only have a couple slabs or in a rib rack if you have more than that.
If using a rib rack, put them in the rack with the thick edge on top. The thick part has more fat, and as that fat renders out, it'll slide down the rib and coat it. That's the idea, anyway.
Tips can be laid on top across the top edges of the racked ribs. Try not to touch ribs together on the faces of the slabs or that spot won't develop bark.
Now you're into the Initial Smoke--about 3hrs if the smoker is in the 250°F range.
Leave the ribs on the smoker for at least an hour undisturbed. Don't peek and don't tweak unless the temperature isn't what it should be. Really, you don't have to touch them for the full three-hour Initial Smoke if all is well.
From time to time, however, you may open the smoker (quickly) and spray the ribs with your mixture of apple cider vinegar and apple juice, if you like. I do less of this now than I ever have--I might spray the slabs a couple times the entire cook.
During the Initial Smoke, you'll also want to prep for the Foil Wrap.
Pull as many lengths of aluminum foil as you need to double-wrap every slab and tip section.
Mix the following in a bowl:
Apple cider vinegar
Apple juice or cider
Whatever barbecue sauce you like
Maybe some applesauce but not too much
Maybe some brown sugar if you really like sweet ribs (I don't)
I'm not going to use too much of this stuff. Just enough to glaze.
Once the Initial Smoke is over, it's time for the Foil Wrap phase.
Take the ribs off the smoker.
For each slab or length of tip:
Put it on a length of foil.
Brush it lightly on both sides with the mixture you made earlier.
Wrap in the foil. Then wrap again in another length of foil.
Put the foil packages back on the smoker, with the ribs meat side down (as opposed to bone side down). Leave them there for about an hour, depending on your smoker temp and how tender you want your ribs to be. I flip the packages halfway through this period (after 30min).
Next up: the Final Cook and Dressing stage.
Take the packets off the smoker. Let them cool about 15 minutes, then open up the packets to reveal your ribs.
They'll look kind of depressing, like ribs you'd get at a steakhouse that doesn't have a smoker. Don't worry about it.
One could re-dust the ribs with Rub (just a little...not a thick coat). Then again, maybe they have enough stuff on them, and you might elect not to do that.
Put the ribs back on the smoker. If you can put the ribs flat on the grill, do it. If you have too many, just get 'em back in the rib rack (with the fat edge on top, like before).
You can jack up the heat here a little bit, if you want. 300 degrees or so is OK.
The only goal is to tighten up the exterior so it gets bark-like. The meat is already edible. You're just tuning texture. Spray the ribs with your vinegar/juice mixture occasionally.
When you think "man, these look good," take the ribs off the smoker. Put them on a platter and take them inside.
When the meat isn't too hot to handle, take your kitchen shears and cut the tip sections into chunks, 1" thick or so. I usually cut the ribs into sections of two or three bones each.
Serve with sauce on the side.
Butt / Shoulder
Pork shoulder is, as you might surmise, the shoulder of a pig you're gonna eat. Pork butt? Not a pig butt! It's part of the eating pig's shoulder. Seriously, no joke.
Here's how it works.
Three words are important when it comes to knowing all about a pig's shoulder:
BOSTON
BUTT
PICNIC
Boston butt is often called, simply, the pork butt. So if the meat hunk you're buying is pork and it has either "Boston" or "butt" in the name, here ya go. The cut is from the top of the pig, over the shoulder blade. This cut is full of marbled fat. It's pretty easy to cook, because it's hard to overdo, though it'll get mushy if you really really hammer it. You always pull apart this part of the shoulder to serve and eat it. Can't really slice it. It'll be falling apart when you're done, if you did it properly.
Picnic shoulder, picnic ham, whatever...if it's part of a pig's shoulder and it has "picnic" in the name, it's the lower part of the pig's shoulder. "Picnic" is a leaner, tougher cut than a "Boston" cut. Don't take "tough" the wrong way. It holds its form better and has more meaty texture than a Boston butt does. Great for slicing. Some people prefer the flavor, probably the same people who prefer the concentrated flavor of the leaner parts of a brisket.
If you get an enormous thing that has the bone in it and looks like the entire shoulder of an animal...it's probably got both sections on it. The challenge in cooking an entire shoulder like that is the cooking time. The picnic section will take longer to get up to temp than the Boston. But you can even them out quite a bit by wrapping...and more on that later.
Anyway, chances are you'll end up with a Boston butt, and that's where I'd start if I were you. And maybe end. I could smoke Boston butt/shoulder every single time and be happy. That's all I have to say about that.
OK, so you need:
Pork shoulder (Boston butt recommended to start and really forever)
Midyett Premium Rub, of course
Yellow mustard
Apple cider vinegar
Apple cider or apple juice
All the stuff in Smoking Basics
Spray bottle
Maybe a meat injector
Preparing the meat and smoker and stuff
Whether to inject shoulders and briskets is a matter of taste and appetite for bother.
Personally, I inject brisket maybe half the time and pork shoulder 100% of the time. I think injecting adds a ton of flavor to pork, and the cut is so enormous it's semi-neededish. Having flavorful elements working on the interior of the shoulder during the cook makes a lot of sense to me.
You can get cheapo plastic meat injectors at any supermarket. If you're going to do it more than once, I highly recommend springing for an all-metal one.
It's pretty simple to do. You just mix up an injecting fluid in a bowl. Taste it to make sure it's good (but not after you start injecting, since it'll have pork stuff in it then). Draw the fluid into the syringe, and inject it into the shoulder. Do that a whole bunch. (Very often your shoulder will be wrapped in plastic. I leave mine in the plastic for the injection, since it helps contain any leakage.)
Here's where I'd start with the solution:
Apple cider vinegar (unfiltered if your spray bottle's nozzle can handle it)
Apple juice (also unfiltered if the nozzle can deal)
Mix those things to taste. You can add water as well if you like or ginger ale if you're feeling fancy. I go more vinegary, you might like a sweeter mix, whatever.
I do not add salt to the injecting fluid, and I do not inject longer than an hour or two before the shoulder goes on the smoker. You're not makin' ham.
Smoking Basics covers the setup of your smoker.
Finally, take some of your injection stuff and put it in the spray bottle. Or mix apple cider vinegar and apple cider/juice to taste and put that in there, if you didn't inject.
Applying the Rub to the shoulder
So hey. If the cut you bought has skin on it, take it off. I would try to grill it up later and eat it, though your mileage may vary on eating that kind of thing. But it won't do you any favors when you're smoking.
If there's a bone in the shoulder, leave it in.
Smear the entire shoulder with a very light layer of mustard.
Apply the Rub very generously to the exterior of the shoulder.
Trust me—you will not taste the mustard.
Cooking the shoulder part you are meaning to eat later
I'm going to make this pretty short.
You're going to want to keep the smoker between 225 and 275.
Shoulder is durable, particularly Boston cuts. If the environment gets hot, it's OK for a brief period. But try to keep it in that 225-275 range.
You're shooting for a meat temperature between 195 and 205. Once it gets to 195 or so, I pick at it a little to see if it's falling apart yet. If it is, I take it off. If it's not, I let it go a bit more.
It's going to take a very long time to smoke the shoulder to that point. Like...90min/lb to 2hrs/lb. That kind of long.
After 3-4hrs on the smoker, I'd hit it with the spray bottle every 90min or so.
And at the 6-hour mark or so, I'd have a meat thermometer in it to see where I was. I use therms that have remote probes on them, so I don't have to open the smoker to check.
Now, if you need to get the shoulder done sooner...you can always wrap.
Wrapping means you take the shoulder off the smoker, and you wrap it (double-wrap it!) in foil.
Then you return the shoulder to the smoker (or...an oven, if you want to cheat) and let it cook.
When to wrap? Some people do it just as the shoulder enters the "stall" period. The "stall" is when the cut of meat (happens with brisket as well) is sweating off moisture enough to cool itself and stall any temperature rise in the meat. Generally the stall kicks in at about 160-170. It can last...a disconcertingly long time. And that's why people usually resort to wrapping at that point.
I'm agnostic about wrapping with Boston butt. I always wrap picnic cuts or whole shoulders, because they take longer to cook. But pork butt has so much fat in it that it is unlikely to dry out if the temperature isn't too high, and I love the bark on the meat's surface so much that I want to preserve it.
My middle position is often to ride out the stall and wrap only when I start to see the butt come out of the stall. When I see the temp (after a long time sitting at, say, 165) start to rise, I let it go up a few degrees, and then I might pull the shoulder and wrap it.
Why wait? Well, once the cut is out of the stall, it's given off most of its excess moisture. And therefore the wrap is less likely to hold in moisture and end up sort of "steaming the meat"...and trashing my nice bark in the process.
Anyway. Get the shoulder to 195 internal, and see if it's starting to fall apart on you. If not, let it go a bit longer, as high as 205 if you need it.
Once it's beginning to fall apart...take off the shoulder. Wrap it in foil. Let it sit in an unheated oven or a cooler for an hour or so (you can wrap it in towels if you're paranoid that it's going to cool off too much). This resting period is important. It allows the meat to settle down and the juices in it to spread out and redistribute themselves.
Unwrap the foil gingerly and transfer the shoulder to a cutting board. You're not going to cut it. If you got it right, you should be able to pull it apart now. I have these "bear claw" things for pulling pork, and they work great, but you can do it with a couple of large serving forks easily enough.
Once pulled, here's what I like to do:
Spray the pulled pork with a little of my spray from the cook (vinegar/cider)
Dust it lightly with Rub
Mix up the pork
Taste it
And repeat those four steps until I'm confident I've got a spread of pulled pork that is going to taste great through and through. Mix the bark with the interior meat, and it'll be great for everyone.
For what it's worth...a 12-15lb pork butt isn't a one-meal kind of thing in our house. Here's how it usually works out.
Night #1 - pulled pork
The next morning - pulled pork and eggs
Night #2 - I eat pulled pork but everybody else is still full from Night #1
Night #3 - Tacos
The next morning - we make chili out of whatever is left
Chops
I will get to it. Suffice to say, for now, that I use a grill and a griddle both.
Grilling Basics
What you need to do to grill things...go!
Get this stuff:
- A grill (kettle, "egg"-style, something like that)
- Hardwood charcoal and a little bit of hardwood (chips, a chunk, whatever)
- Some food to grill
So there's grilling and there's smoking. Grilling is cooking over a fire at moderate to high heat for a short time. Smoking (barbecuing) is cooking over smoke at low temperature for a long time. This here tutorial thingy is about grilling.
Now...if you have a gas grill...no judging. I use 'em when they are around. Just fire it up and grill the food. If you have multiple burners and can afford to leave one unlit, do that. You can move things over to that part of the grill to sit for a bit, if they get cooked enough and you need to catch up with other stuff or whatever. And also ignore the rest of this thing.
If you do not have a gas grill...are they gone? OK...good for you. Man, who wants to cook on one of those things? You might as well stay inside, right? Don't you feel bad for those people? Me too. Ugh caveman cook food wood fire, me big caveman. So anyway, let's move on with real grilling.
Fill a charcoal chimney with charcoal and get it going. Use hardwood (a/k/a "lump") charcoal, if at all possible. Briquettes are a total drag for smoking, but you can get away with them when grilling. Still, I don't recommend them. They don't burn as hot as lump, they don't smell or taste as good, and they produce a ton of ash.
Now...if you are cooking just a bit of food, or you're cooking just veggies for some reason, or even cooking real thin stuff like bulgogi or cutlets, you might only want a half-chimney of charcoal. And I don't clear out the grill if there's viable charcoal in the bottom (as opposed to just ash, which I do trash)--if you have a bunch of leftover charcoal in there, then a half-chimney might be the ticket for your cook.
I use some kind of pulpy paper (newspaper is ideal) crumpled up to light the chimney. Crumple the paper into balls, put it on a non-flammable surface like concrete or the bottom of your grill, light it on fire, and put the chimney with charcoal in it on top of the now-burning paper. You can use a crumpled-up paper bag, as well, but it might not catch as quickly (hint: light a candle, drip wax on the paper, and light the waxy paper with the candle--wax is an accelerant). You know what else works great? Peanut shells. Seriously great for lighting a fire.
Anyway, LIGHT IT, then let the chimney run until the top of it sees ash. You should have at least a bit of white ash on the top of the charcoal in there. Then dump the coals into the grill...
...ideally leaving about a quarter of the available space largely free of charcoal.
Why? So you will feel smart when you have a steak or piece of chicken or charred pepper that is done early and you want to keep it warm but not full-on cooking for another five minutes.
The charcoal you have in there? You ideally want it spread out evenly over the area you DID want covered. That can be hard to do pouring charcoal out of a chimney. Maybe move coals around with tongs to get it evenish. Once you grill a bunch, you get good at managing the hot and cool spots, and maybe this will not matter much.
If you have wood to add here...add it. Use only hardwood, and not too much. You're only going to get a short amount of time with the smoke. It's going to be an accent, not a primary element as in smoking. Let it burn a bit before putting anything on the grill.
For grilling, I would suggest opening the bottom damper on the grill completely. Get it hot. And you may or may not be using the grill cover. If I'm cooking sausage or hot dogs or burgers, I do those cooks with an open grill mostly (though I do smoke sausage at low temperature sometimes when barbecuing). Steaks, I'll use the lid, but usually when I do put the lid on over steaks, I close off all dampers completely.
A note on burning grease and fat: it's not a major flavor issue when grilling like it is with barbecue, mostly because the temperature of a grilling fire is so much hotter than a smoking fire. The grease burns off more quickly and completely. The food isn't lingering over the smoldering grease fire for many many minutes, soaking up the petroleum taste. If anything, a little beef grease just adds some grilly grillness on the flavor front--but only at grilling temps! You want to avoid burning grease completely on a low and slow cook.
Anyway, if your grill is hot, good job. You're ready to grill now.
Smoking Basics
What you need to smoke meat:
- Hardwood charcoal
- Hardwood chunks (not chips)
- Drip pan (large hotel pan)
- Grill with a couple layers of grills (more on that later)
And now...here's how you set up your grill to smoke meat.
We're talking kettle grills and kamado-style smokers like the Big Green Egg and so forth. If you have something fancier like an offset smoker or whatever, good for you! But you can figure that out on your own!
Fill a charcoal chimney with charcoal and get it going. I'll assume you know how to use a charcoal chimney. Use hardwood charcoal, not briquettes. Briquettes are not pure wood. They have fillers like clay and other stuff in 'em. As a result, you're smoking your meat with whatever else is in the briquettes as well as whatever wood material is in there. Even if the fillers do not flavor the meat (they might), the non-wood stuff in there means they won't produce the same flavorful impact as hardwood charcoal. The filler also means briquettes ash a TON. Plus I don't think they last as long for low-temp cooks, maybe because they ash so much and kinda smother themselves or something, I don't know. I think they're a drag.
Fill the bottom of the smoker with unlit charcoal—”fill,” yeah…not FILL-fill. Just get a good one-chunk-thick layer of charcoal in there. Dump the chimney onto it once the chimney stuff is nice and hot.
Add 5-6 sizable chunks of hardwood to the fire—or less. I like a lot of early smoke myself, but you can overdo it, I guess. Spread the chunks out so they’re not clumped together.
What kind of wood? Hardwood of some kind. Hickory and oak are good for most everything, as are other nut woods like pecan. Cherry is good for cuts of beef. Apple is great for pork or chicken, just OK for beef (kind of light). I like mesquite, but it’s strong--I wouldn’t use it all alone if you can help it, and I wouldn't use it at all on anything but beef. A mix of wood will give you good, complex flavor.
The bottom damper on the grill should be maybe ½ way open and the top should be about the same. Just because that’s the middle and you can go up/down on either end from there.
Ideally you’ve got a thermometer on the lid of the grill. Shoot for 225°F or maybe 250°F tops. Overshooting is best to avoid—high temp wastes fuel and takes a long time to come down.
You’ll want to have some kind of two-level grill scene so you can put a drip pan between the fire and the meat. There is a variety of ways to do this—just depends on your grill deal. Maybe you have an offset smoker, and it’s a nonissue. But the drip pan should have a large surface, it should be pretty shallow (couple inches deep), it should not be right on the coals, and it should be maybe half full of water—room at the top for whatever grease falls into the pan.
The top grill goes above the drip pan—worst case, you can put the drip pan on the regular grill and balance a second grill on top of the drip pan. That would be wobbly, but I’ve done it and it works OK.
Just do not allow too much grease to get in the fire. It’s not like getting a little steak fat on the fire when grilling. A brisket, for example, puts out a lot of grease from the fatty point and the fat cap. If that grease gets into the fire to any great extent, you’ll end up with a hot-ass grease fire, greasy smoke, and meat that has this gross petrol taste. Even if other people don’t notice it, you will, and it will bum you out.
Once your drip pan is “secured” or at least there, with a grill above it...you're ready to put on the meat.