Bringing together two of the finer things in life... wine and BBQ
Opening day for Cork and Pork BBQ
After weeks of planning and research, the Landmann Black Dog 42 was put to its first test on Sunday, June 22. On 6/20 Todd and I purchased a 7.9 lb pork shoulder (or more specifically a Boston blade roast) from the fine people at House of Homemade Sausage in Germantown, WI. After looking at dry rub recipes and advice from the various online BBQ experts, we decided we should start with a basic recipe and build from there. I applied the dry rub Saturday night for our Sunday BBQ. The color was glorious by Sunday morning, a nice brick red from the paprika and cayanne pepper.
Being a true man of the outdoors, I got out the axe Sunday morning and chopped up some apple wood to be used later to smoke the pork (in all fairness, Todd chopped some wood later too, and even got a blister). I got the coals going a little after 10 to get the smoking chamber up to temperature (225-275 degrees) by 11. Todd got to my house around 11 and after we injected the pork shoulder with some apple cider, it was on the grill by 11:20. We added the first chunks of apple wood, and man did the smoke start to billow out of the Black Dog. As Todd predicted, the most difficult part of the BBQing was keeping a constant temperature in the smoking chamber, and the 2 brief rain clouds that passed over during the day did not help us in this regard. The other challenge was resisting the urge to constantly open the smoking chamber to look at the nice cooked crust that was forming on the pork. So we could only drink beer and play some catch until it was time to start mopping the pork about 3 hours into the cooking. This is also when we got the beans cooking inside on the stove, although we later learned that the top of the Landmann is a perfect place for cooking the beans. The rain added an hour on to our cooking time, but at about 6 we took it off the grill and wrapped it in foil to steam for another 45 minutes. We broke out the Bear Paws and ripped that SOB up into a delicious mass of shredded pork. The pork turned out great, with probably a 1" smoke ring on the outside of the shoulder. Plenty of apple wood flavor, juicy and tender. It was served with cole slaw, baked beans, and picnic potatoes (courtesy of Christa), and made for a great dinner. We also had a sampling of 3 different BBQ sauces so that we could start to identify the flavors that we will want in our own homemade sauce. In all, we were very proud of our first effort.
Being a true man of the outdoors, I got out the axe Sunday morning and chopped up some apple wood to be used later to smoke the pork (in all fairness, Todd chopped some wood later too, and even got a blister). I got the coals going a little after 10 to get the smoking chamber up to temperature (225-275 degrees) by 11. Todd got to my house around 11 and after we injected the pork shoulder with some apple cider, it was on the grill by 11:20. We added the first chunks of apple wood, and man did the smoke start to billow out of the Black Dog. As Todd predicted, the most difficult part of the BBQing was keeping a constant temperature in the smoking chamber, and the 2 brief rain clouds that passed over during the day did not help us in this regard. The other challenge was resisting the urge to constantly open the smoking chamber to look at the nice cooked crust that was forming on the pork. So we could only drink beer and play some catch until it was time to start mopping the pork about 3 hours into the cooking. This is also when we got the beans cooking inside on the stove, although we later learned that the top of the Landmann is a perfect place for cooking the beans. The rain added an hour on to our cooking time, but at about 6 we took it off the grill and wrapped it in foil to steam for another 45 minutes. We broke out the Bear Paws and ripped that SOB up into a delicious mass of shredded pork. The pork turned out great, with probably a 1" smoke ring on the outside of the shoulder. Plenty of apple wood flavor, juicy and tender. It was served with cole slaw, baked beans, and picnic potatoes (courtesy of Christa), and made for a great dinner. We also had a sampling of 3 different BBQ sauces so that we could start to identify the flavors that we will want in our own homemade sauce. In all, we were very proud of our first effort.
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