Saturday Shoulder - 1st one


 
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George(moe) Higgins

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I beat the sun up here this morning to check on my 1st shoulder. Darn it. I cannot find butt around my general area so I had to settle for a picnic shoulder. Anyone heard have experience with Smith Farms?

On to the details. Started with a 10.5 lb shoulder with skin removed and gave it a liberal coat of regular yellow mustard on Thursday night. Early yesterday morning I gave it a rub. I made up a batch of Doctor Dolan's from Paul Kirk's Championship BBQ Sauces and applied.

About 8PM last night I removed the shoulder from the fridge and applied another coat of rub, leaving the meat on the counter to come to room temp.

It was damp on my deck from heavy thundershowers earlier that evening. At 10PM, fired up a chimney of Kingsford and proceeded with the Minion Method. By 10:20 I had the WSM assembled and then filled the foil lined water pan. At 10:30 the shoulder went in and with stable temps around 250, I retired at 12am.

4AM - dark! Only 60 degrees out and I hoped the WSM temp was ok. Around 240 and I was fine with that. Decided to fill the water pan up which presented a problem. Apparently my inept foil technique used to line the waterpan caught me. After filling, water was somehow creeping "up" a fold in the foil and flowing down the underside of the waterpan directly into my coals.

4:30 am and thinking this is temporary, I place a ladel through the door catching the water and bailing like fool. Not good. I've compromised my fire by now for sure. The stream of water won't stop so I'm forced to disassemble the WSM and remove the waterpan. Bye bye foil and by 5am I have the WSM back to temp. I may have to add more charcoal thanks to my aqua-venture. Thats the 1st and last time I'm using foil. /infopop/emoticons/icon_mad.gif

It's now 6am and I'm going to make a sauce I saw somewhere along with a couple Danny Gauldin rub recipes. Almost Dreamland BBQ Sauce.

I'll be back later to provide an update.

George
 
George(moe),

After you clean that water pan a couple of times you'll probably reconsider using foil on it. I have never had the problem you describe. I use The Reynolds wide heavy-duty stuff. It is wide enough to cover the entire pan with one sheet. If you used regular width foil, I can see where you might have a problem.

Steve
 
Steve,

YES. I need the wide stuff. Having cleaned the pan about 8 times now, it's not that bad. But it's only two months old. /infopop/emoticons/icon_eek.gif

I did add a few handfuls of Kingsford to continue the cook. Shoulder came off about 11:30 after 13 hours. That's real close to Jim Minion's guideline of 70 min/lb. Temp was around 200 internal and I was lucky to got the P I G off the grate in one piece.

Just finished a big breakfast so the pulling will have to wait. Foiled and toweled the shoulder into a cooler to keep hot. I'm still cooking down the bbq sauce and should be done with that shortly.

Maybe I'll head out later to find that elusive butt. /infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif

George
 
I've had the same problem with the foil. The 18" foil doesn't quite cover the inside of the larger water pan, so I put 2 sheets together and fold them several times at one edge.

Instead of tucking the excess foil over the edge of the pan, I fold it either toward the inside of the water pan or tuck it between the foil liner and the water pan.and just let the doubled edge stand up. Haven't had a problem since.

Rita
 
Hi Rita,

My main problem was that I foiled the bottom of the waterpan as well and created a duct that caused the problem. My pan cleans up pretty well so I'm going to stick with the no foil method.

To close on my 1st shoulder experience. Boy was I /infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif with the results. Sometime around 3:00 on Saturday I removed the meat from the cooler and pulled. Man was it still hot. So hot I burned my fingers a bit. Pork was absolutely out of this world and I was pretty pleased with the rub I used. The only change I would make is to use more smoke wood. Bark was pretty good.

The Almost Dreamland BBQ sauce I made had a bit much vinegar for this yankee but it was still good. I adjusted with some additional brown sugar and molasses. The recipe called for a 30 min simmer but I found I needed to simmer for 3 hours to get the right consistency. I can fix this next time by reducing the water.

Can't wait for the next overnighter. Maybe Friday. /infopop/emoticons/icon_cool.gif
 
George,

I quit foiling the bottom of the water pan. I'm getting lazy and don't foil the inside for short cooks and/or when cooking foods that are not very fatty. My dishwasher takes care of cleaning the pan handily.

For long cooks and/or greasy foods, however, I think the drippings might burn on like concrete, so I just foil the inside, with no overhang of the foil.

Regarding the reduction of your BBQ sauce, you might want to use a wider saute pan or Dutch oven instead of a saucepan. That'll give more surface area for evaporation.

Congratulations on your first shoulder cook. You done good!

Rita
 
George, great story about the foil.

I think it would be useful to have a permanent section of TVWB that describes what NOT to do!

I know I've started a few threads here on the subject of what NOT to do.
 
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