Heresy?

[Eric Moe]

Last month a spent a week away from my KK and visited Tybee Island (near Savannah). After a few days on the beach, Went into town to get supplies (more beer,) and stumbled across Barnes BBQ. Their pulled pork was good enough I found an excuse to grab another dose the next day. Hot, sweet and the right amount of basalmic... So today I adjusted my cook to replicate.

To get the flavor I wanted I modified my approach. First I rubbed a 9# bone-in Boston Butt with my own hot & sweet mix, then combined the following

- 1/2 cup Backstrap Molasses

- 1/2 cup Basalmic Vinegar

- 1/2 cup Apple cider vinegar

- 1 cup 100% apple juice

Next I put the butt in my large cast iron Dutch oven and injected the above with my SpitJack. At the end whatever was not in the butt was in the dutch oven.

I put it on about 6 pm last night at 225 (used pecan wood for smoke) and then pulled about 11 am. I let the butt rest an hour to cool down before pulling. I reserved the drippings (~ 3 cups) in a bowl and put into the fridge to make it easier to spoon the fat from the top. After removing the fat, I added the drippings back into the pulled pork as my sauce.

I didn't nail it (need to add a bit more sweet, or back off basalmic), but pretty damn close . Good smoke flavor, great bark on top anyway...

So smoking in a dutch oven... Heresy or anyone else played with this technique?

[5698k]

Re: Heresy?

Was there so much liquid that you needed the dutch oven? Or would any deeper pan do? It sounds great, the only way I would cry heresy would be if you cooked this on a non kk!

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[DennisLinkletter]

Re: Heresy?

May I ask what the reasoning to put it in the pot was? For maximum transfer of the vapor from your charcoal and smoking wood to meat you want as much surface area as possible and to be as cold as possible..

Throwing it in a pot reduces this valuable condensation from happening..

That being said I want one of those posts for stew!

[Eric Moe]

Re: Heresy?

The biggest difference between my BBQ and what I had at Barnes was the moisture. In my typical cook I inject, smoke, foil and then pull. Great BBQ, but if I wanted to add any new liquid it would ave to be a sauce and not something that had the benefit of 15 hours to combine with the meat and rub.

The pot simply reserves all the excess liquid from the injection as well as what renders during the cook to use instead of a prepared sauce. When I do not use the pot, this same liquid ends up evaporated on top of the foil of my drip pan.

Perhaps I should simply learn to embrace BBQ sauce, but I have never thought well executed BBQ should need any?

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[DennisLinkletter]

Re: Heresy?

The biggest difference between my BBQ and what I had at Barnes was the moisture. In my typical cook I inject, smoke, foil and then pull. Great BBQ, but if I wanted to add any new liquid it would ave to be a sauce and not something that had the benefit of 15 hours to combine with the meat and rub.

The pot simply reserves all the excess liquid from the injection as well as what renders during the cook to use instead of a prepared sauce. When I do not use the pot, this same liquid ends up evaporated on top of the foil of my drip pan.

Perhaps I should simply learn to embrace BBQ sauce, but I have never thought well executed BBQ should need any?

My 2 cents...

If you would like to maintain more moisture in your Q, I recommend you brining, putting the meat in cold and cooling at a lower temp 225-250º until the meat hits about 145º and then cranking it up to 350º to speed up the time on the plateau (reduce evaporation) and get you to your target of 190º then immediately wrap in foil, wrap in a towel and throw it in a cooler for a few hours..

[mguerra]

Re: Heresy?

I like the concept of capturing all that juice and will give it a try. One of the cool things about the hot fast brisket is getting all that juice from the foil.

And just a quick reminder. If you disassemble your pork butt and remove all the fat and connective tissue before shredding it, keep all that discard. Put it in a pan or pot and render it down.

Pour all that fat, juice and the crispy bits back in to the shredded pork. Outrageous.

[Syzygies]

Re: Heresy?

My 2 rupiahs... If you would like to maintain more moisture in your Q' date=' I recommend you brining, putting the meat in cold and cooling at a lower temp 225-250º until the meat hits about 145º and then cranking it up to 350º to speed up the time on the plateau (reduce evaporation) and get you to your target of 190º then immediately wrap in foil[/quote'] A friend was asking me about this lately, I described two places where I like to linger during a cook, racing the rest of the way as you describe: Below 145º for smoke absorption, and somewhere else unspecified to convert collagen to gelatin. Since then I've been playing with and reviewing sous vide again. Right now, I have some corned brisket from Cafe Rouge in Berkeley at 150º sous vide going on 48 hours, to convert all the collagen without shortening the muscle fibers, conventional damage said to begin at 160º. This from Thomas Keller, Harold McGee, other usual suspects. All for "New England boiled dinner" tonight, Irish soul food from my childhood. So I've been wondering about just using the KK to smoke meats to 145º, then switching to sous vide. One can't package anything hot in a chamber vacuum packer, but the marinade in this thread (or I'd use stock) would be enough to get by just using a $60 impulse sealer to package the meat in standard heat-safe chamber vacuum pouches. snip.jpg[/attachment:2fzi5sbw] One can buy seriously overwrought ziplock bags with built-in check valves for expelling the air. Or not. With an impulse sealer, one can instead seal the very edge of the bag (trapping air and all) then snip off a top corner exposing a 1mm (or so) leak. Now submerge the pouch in water in a large Cambro, let most of the air bubble out, and tease out the remaining air while smoothing the top part of the pouch against the wall of the Cambro. One can leave a tiny bubble by the snip as a telltale reassurance that the snipped bag corner is indeed functioning as a check valve, but this isn't necessary: The two flat pieces of plastic are glued together by the thin film of liquid, and it's work teasing the last bubbles to the top. Water is not going to get in. Now gently move the pouch over to the impulse sealer and put in a permanent seal, set on high to seal through the thin liquid layer. I say all this because there are hundreds of years of tradition where one gives a braise a hot start, upended by a few years of compromise where Modernist chefs adapt to the limitations of chamber vacuum machines, which some have then interpreted as a new convention one must follow. Using instead an impulse sealer, one can explore hybrid approaches beginning with a hot start in a KK.