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Where were you on December 26th 2004 at 4:10 in the a.m.? Yeah huh, sleeping or giving up your holiday dinner to the porcelain express. Hopefully not the latter. The above photograph you see is a starting stove rig for getting your mesquite hunks all lit up, at 4:20 Sunday morning. You see, I had a few honored guests coming for a mid day meat gathering. One of which being Joe Bob, our plucky reporter from Denver. I had this really nice stuffed pork shoulder roast that I wanted to smoke, but I was sure it was going to take at least 5 hours. And if the guests were to arrive about noon, I had to be up and ready very early. It was a bit cold and moist, the fire didn’t want to blaze. Even so I got the smoker warmed and ready in 50 minutes. Meat in, hickory sparklin’, time to pull the chicken and get that pieced out. The effort it took was worth every second, the day was a complete success.

The pork shoulder roast was one of Fatted Calf’s Spalla Ripienes. A NimanRanch pork shoulder that’s been stuffed with greens, slivered garlic & walnuts. These suckers are ready to go as they are, I just patted it dry (comes all juicy!) and set it aside to warm to room temperature. Room temperature on December 26 at 4am was about 55 degrees. On to the chicken. I bought two Martinelli natural chickies and cut them in to pieces we’d all recognize. Since I’m aiming for a water-thin marinade I found a bowl large enough to hold them all. For chicken, I really like using a fresh sqoozed lemon base. I strained the seeds out, but you don’t have to. They fall off when you pull the chicken out of the marinade or they fall off on the grill. At this point you can do all kinds of great things. I chose fresh herbs (thyme), loads of cayenne, chili powder, oregano, celery seed & smooshed garlic. Let this sit at room temperature from 1 to 2 hours before grill time is expected. Use some tongs and move them about frequently, like the ones on top are getting jealous and want to be submerged. It’s play time with chicken!
Back to the pork. My smoker needs fuel about every 2.5 hours, so 30 minutes before it’s due, I start another load of fresh mesquite and preburn it. This way it hits the smoker going full-on, no large dip in temperature (bad bad). My temperature probe told me I was holding about 210 degrees, sometimes higher sometimes lower. This is what you call low & slow.

Here’s what you get with six and one half hours of hickory smoke at about 190 to 210 degrees. Those of you who have had these types of meat, won’t even question that length of time and temperature. But there are many people who ain’t hip. “Why couldn’t you just jack the heat and lessen the time?” They ask. That may be fine for a conventional indoor oven. But when you want to infuse the meat with smoky goodness and receive a ‘juicy’ hunk of meat, you must lenthen out the cook time and lower the temperature. If you were to cook this pork shoulder at … say 300 degrees for 4 or 5 hours you’d wind up with a far less moist piece of meat with little or no smoky infusion. And brother, or sister, this roast had a HUGE pink smoke ring (the pink ring shows you how far the hickory smoke has penetrated in to the roast. The larger the ring, the higher the Cool Factor of the cook (that’s me).
At maybe 5 hours in to the smoking of the pork, start up your coal fired pit with mesquite or any decent cooking wood. And don’t give me that, “ooo I don’t like mesquite, it makes the food bitter.” That ain’t the mesquite foo. That’s creosote. How does that happen? Poor fire maintenance. That means it’s YOUR fault, pinhead. You allowed the fire to smoulder and produce a poofy white plume. This plume condences on your meat and makes it bitter. Never adjust your fire by closing the exhaust, always FULL open.
Moving on, you’ve got your grill started. Get the coals grey and flattened out. Add that chicken on there while dipping your pieces back in to the marinade. SIZZLE !!!

Once the chicken is about 3/4 cooked, start dipping your chickies in to your favorite sauce. Don’t brush it on, the brush will wipe off all your goodies. Plus you can never get enough sauce ON. Dip about 3 to 5 times and allow each coating to caramelize with the lid down (vents open).

The roast rested for about 30 minutes or so, after 6.5 hours it had an internal temp of 158 degrees F.
At this point J. Lee and Joe Bob had quaffed a few cold beers and were eyeing the resting roast or was it the Maker’s Mark? As bits of pork and chicken bits were flying in to our mouths two more guests arrived! GUESS WHO ?!?!? Yeah, Taylor & Toponia. Too cool man, after the last year & a half or so I was able to show them MeatHenge Labs and how their food tastes to us. This is what the holidays are all about, sharing food & beverages, good times & tales of high adventure. Everyone stepped in to conversation as though we’ve been doing this for years, neat. Taylor shared about some goliath smoker he has, apparently can smoke nearly 400 pounds of meat! AHHAHAHHAHH, that’s insane. My eyes glassed over when he said what it took to actually MOVE it from house to house. Winches and come-a-longs, ropes and trucks and I can’t remember how many huge movers. I showed him my green steel smoker with red racing stripes and our new bard (shed). But it was quite windy and the temperature was dipping, we went back inside for more juicy meat. And juicy it was. The pork roast was amazing. I added NOTHING to it, not even olive oil. The greens offered a warm sweetness, the garlic permeated deep. The smoky flavor wasn’t over powering, in fact all the flavors complimented each other perfectly. I caught Joe Bob later that evening picking the smoked bits of walnut & greens off the heating tray. Crazy good.

Not much of this was left in a few hours. I believe we all had at least fourths. Joe Bob was smart, he ate, rested and then ate some more. The rest of us didn’t rest much, that probably came later in the evening. I know it did for me. Whump in to the chairs we went.
What started out as a cold & dark early December morning turned in to a cold blustery afternoon filled with great company & food. Another successful Gathering of the Minds.
Xo Xo