I opted for a slightly different cook process than Wicked Good suggests. They cook for 250F constant - foiling after the bark has formed to hit around 195F after around 9 hours or so for a 4kg shoulder.
Mine was a bone-in 5Kg pork shoulder, but I cooked it considerably longer even taking the extra weight into account - it went on at 11.45pm on Saturday night & eventually came off at 3.45pm Sunday. A nice 16 hour cook
Why? Simply because I know I get really good moist results from pork shoulders that way on my Kamado Joe. So I went for:
- 225F through the night until 6.30am (I was sooo happy my little one got me up at that time - not!);
- Ramped to 250F until the meat hit 165F;
- Basted with the Wicked Good BBQ sauce recipe & then ramped to 350F for a couple of hours to form the bark;
- Foiled the meat & left it at 350F until it hit 195F internal at which point I tested it and a skewer slide straight in without any resistance;
- Placed the meat in a oven pan, poured some warmed BBQ sauce over the top, foiled & left in the oven for 1.5 hours or so.
I reduced some of the heat from the rub recipe - I like a little heat but I had my parents for dinner & know that it wouldn't have gone down well with them.
Result?
- best BBQ pork I have had to-date. Moist as expected, despite the very flavourful injection, rub & sauce - you could still taste the pork;
- nice bit of apple smoke from the bark;
- I think I could simply drink their BBQ sauce - just delicious. Which is just as well, as their recipe makes 3-times the amount you need for one cook like this!
- The bark was amazing - not tough as old boots, chip your teeth bark. Just a nice bit of crunchiness with some much great flavour going on.
Overall:
- If you like your pork meat on the sweet side, you are going to love this recipe.
So, with the brisket & this pork recipe stacking up so well, I think these two alone were worth the purchase of that book.
On the Kamado Joe, ready to come off after a 16 hour cook:
The bark after foiling & resting for 1.5 hours:
Two full plates of loveliness:
As an aside, the Kamado Joe went on at 11pm on the Saturday night to come up to temperature, and I was still cooking on it at a steady 300F at 8pm the following night - given the amount of charcoal left I decided to do a quick high temperature burn (500F) to clean the grate & then I roasted some whole heads of garlic for use during the week. I am pretty sure it would have gone more than 24 hours on one load of charcoal at a steady 225/250F - a combination of great charcoal (Big K AC15) the Pitmaster controller as well as the Kamado Joe. Cool stuff!