Food For Thought

The experimentation plan for this weekend includes a couple of beef short ribs and a pork butt AKA Boston butt.

I have been doing more research and reading online throughout the week and will be changing up a few things for the smoking session this week.

The first thing I want to address is the bark on my meat. The pork ribs I did last weekend were pretty tasty but looked highly unappealing. Due to the high sugar content in my rub, the bark turned a black color instead of the dark brown that is so sought after in the BBQ world. Note that it didn't taste burnt at all but for presentation purposes, I want to improve on this.

So the rubs I plan to use this weekend will have no sugar in them at all. To get the sweetness I want in my ribs, I will be glazing them during the last 30 minutes or so of cooking to try and develope just the right amout of caramelization.

A second technique I plan to try is injection. Particularly for larger cuts like shoulders, butts, briskets, chickens and turkeys, injecting the meat prior to smoking is recommended. I will be giving this a shot on my pork butt this weekend.

A third technique I will also be experimenting with is tenting - that is, wrapping the meat in aluminum foil once it hits 160F in order to encourage moisture retention and tenderizing through steaming. Apparently, it's a tried and true technique of making succulent pulled pork.

Lastly, I am going to modify my use of a spritz/mop. I found with my ribs last weekend that the mop I used really didn't add any flavor that I could detect. I think that if I try one on the pork butt, I will use one that has a much stronger flavor.

I have also ready arguments that mopping only serves to prolong cooking time and actually dries the meat out more than it moistens it. With this in mind, if I do mop, it won't be as often as every half hour.

So there you have the battle plan for this weekend. I will, of course, report back with the results.