jennings rampage

I know what I want, and I want it in 12-13 hours.

5:45am: Welcome to barbecue liveblogging. About 15 minutes ago, I placed three seven-pound Boston butts on the pit. If everything goes well, by 6pm I’ll have 21 pounds of pure incomparable superlative-superlative food.

I took the day off from work today for this: the opportunity to wake up far before I do on the days I go to work. This evening is Katy’s sister’s rehearsal dinner-reception, and I quickly suggested that their Canadian family might enjoy a distinctive Southern meal, and I quickly followed-up with an offer to take care of the barbecue. Sure, it’s an early morning, but it keeps me parked at the pit and out of the messy details the day before the wedding. That’s important to me.

At 5am, I lit a mixure of one-third hickory chunks and two-thirds lump charcoal in my charcoal chimney. (Professor Barbecue sez: keep your briquettes the hell away from my barbecue.) When that was good and hot, I transferred it to the offset firebox of my sweet-ass barbecue pit, and waited for it to burn down to coals. The pork went into the cooking chamber, and I closed everything down except for the exhaust and just a little bit of intake to keep the coals burning nice and slow. Current exhaust temperature: 210°F, right in the 200-220°F target range for this application.

I’m going to check everything to make sure it’s nice and stable, and then I’m going to make a cardinal mistake: a cat-nap. My alarm is set for 8am. I’ll see you back then.

8:04am: Current exhaust temperature: 170°F. See, taking a nap is a bad idea. Before I went back to bed, I set up some raw coals in a line leading out of the hot coals, so there’d be a little fuel for the fire and it could continue to burn. (That’s the advantage of lump charcoal — I’d never want to add raw briquettes to a fire, since they burn off so much nastiness when you first light them. Lump charcoal doesn’t have the fillers and binders that burn so rough at the start.) But evidently, I’m not great at that technique yet. I’ve got coals lit in the chimney right now to provide some backup and get the temperature back.

10:19am: Current exhaust temperature: 200°F. I did better with that nap. Barbecue is a game of adjustment — when to open the intake airflow, when to close the intake airflow, when to add raw coals to a fire, when to light a whole new batch of coals in the chimney, when to steal a few minutes sleep.

The pork’s been cooking for almost five hours at this point, so it’s time to start thinking about basting. The goal of basting is to keep the surface of the meat moist (no kidding) because a moist surface conducts heat into the roast better than a dry surface. The meat’s not going to dry out — pork shoulder is nice and fatty, and the temperature in the cooker isn’t hot enough to boil the water inside the meat. Also, a baste might bring a little flavor along, which is why I use apple cider vinegar diluted with water. I deliver the baste with a spray bottle, because it’s fun and efficient.

10:52am: Current exhaust temperature: 228°F. Just a little bit hot, but that’s not a big deal — a conventional oven doesn’t keep a constant temperature, it cycles on and off. If you graphed the temperature in an oven, it would be sinusodial. Good ovens have a low amplitude of that curve — the temperature only varies by twenty or so degrees on either side of the target. A good barbecue chef also aims to keep the amplitude of his sine curve as low as possible.

If I started blogging this last night, I’d have covered all the prep work that goes into this process. So I’ll just wedge it in here.

We start with meat selection. We want to buy roasts that are as close to identical in weight and dimension as possible, which will make it easier to have all the meat done at the same time. I selected three roasts, each weighing between 7 and 7.2 pounds. Once I got them home, I slathered them in a layer of cheap yellow mustard, which is there mostly to give the dry rub something to adhere to. I’d love to tell you what’s in my dry rub, but I believe I’ve completely forgotten. It goes something like this: garlic powder, onion powder, kosher salt, cumin, sage, black pepper, crushed red pepper, cayenne pepper.

Once the roasts have their mustard and their rub, I stick them in the bottom of the fridge in jumbo zip-top bags to marinate for the night. Once the pit’s ready the next morning, I add another layer of dry rub on top.

The other advantage of the mustard layer is that it keeps the roast moist for the first few hours of cooking, which we’ve already established is a fine thing to do.

11:14am: Current exhaust temperature: 203°F. See?! Don’t think this is easy. I sit down to write for a few minutes, and I lose 25 degrees. I’ve opened up the intake a little more to get the temperature back up to 210°F or so.

11:48am: Current exhaust temperature: 300°F. See?! This is why we don’t add raw coals and open the air intake all the way and walk off and forget about it. This isn’t easy!

The air intake is closed, and I took this opportunity to baste. I will have to be more vigilant, which will be difficult when I need to go get a haircut at some point today.

12:59pm: Current exhaust temperature: 212°F. Everything back to normal and stable. I had a little lunch, took a shit, basically acted like I have the day off. Is this not as thrilling as I thought it would be?

About four and a half hours before we’ll be done, I hope. Still need to get the sauce made. I normally do that the night before, but I got lazy. Now, barbecue sauce is neverending war, but I’m not loyal to geographical considerations. Even though all the sauce you get around here is eastern-NC vinegar & pepper sauce (maybe with a bottle of Lexington-style to mix things up), I’m partial to South Carolina style mustard & vinegar sauce. I’ll share the recipe later today.

1:31pm: Current exhaust temperature: 186°F. We need backup — I’ve lit another full chimney of hickory and charcoal. I’m just about out of lump charcoal — will I take the risk and run to the store to get another bag, or will I compromise my principles and use briquettes? Drama!

2:14pm: Current exhaust temperature: 228°F. Things are stable here. I just got out of the shower, and I’m about to run to the store to get another bag of lump charcoal. Actually, I’m going to the store to get ALL the lump charcoal — it was a “close out” item on Wednesday, and I hope there’s some left. Wish me luck.

2:47pm: Current exhaust temperature: 218°F. Mission Accomplished. They had three 10-pound bags of the good stuff left, but I could only bring myself to snatch up two of them, and left one for my homies. They wouldn’t scan at the register, either. The cashier was like, “honey, you know there are holes in these bags, right?” And I was all, “Idon’tcareIhavetohaveit.” Grocery store employees must get sick of dealing with the charcoal junkies.

3:26pm: Current exhaust temperature: 185°F and rising. The temperature spikes every time you open the lid, and I just had leave it open for awhile to baste and rotate the roasts. The internal temperature is averaging around 160°F already — our target is 175-180°F. We’re on track to pull them in the 5:30-6pm range.

Time to make the sauce! I really should have done this last night.

3:53pm: Current exhaust temperature: 208°F. The sauce is done. As promised, here is the procedure:

In a medium saucepan, melt a stick of butter over medium heat. Once melted, turn the heat down to low and combine 2 1/4 cups of cheap yellow mustard, 2 1/4 cups of cheap red wine vinegar, 3/4 cup of Splenda (don’t feel bad about Splenda here, no one will ever know), a few good dashes of Worcestershire and Red Hot, fresh ground pepper and kosher salt. Kill the heat, stir until combined, and bottle.

4:41pm: Current exhaust temperature: 231°F. We’re in the home stretch. The sauce is bottled and packed, the pork looks to be coming right on schedule, and I’m doing my best to jinx myself with this premature self-congratulations.

5:35pm: Current exhaust temperature: 264°F. Going hot to go home. Katy’s antsy that I’m not on the road yet, even though I was told to plan for service at 7pm. So I’m cranking up the heat just a little bit to get them off in a half hour or so. You can’t rush perfection, but it’s going to be just fine. Smells great. You can’t have any.

1:31am: Huge success. I pulled them at 6pm, wrapped them in foil, and drove them the thirty minutes to Raleigh. I pulled the smallest roast first, and it was a total showstopper. We had a massive trailer gas grill that we were basically using as the world’s largest chafing dish, and the owner of that trailer insisted on chopping one of the roasts. I calmly explained that while whole hog may want to be chopped, the pork shoulder definitely wants to be pulled, what with the way the muscle is structured and what not. But he persisted, and I acquiesced and watched in horror as he pulverized my beautiful pork shoulder with two meat cleavers for about fifteen minutes, and then poured the contents of one of my sauce bottles all over it. I could have cried. I followed him around for much of the rest of the night, passive-aggressively letting him know what I thought about him and his whole operation. But I had the last laugh, as the third shoulder (which had been left to warm wrapped in foil on the grill) came off towards the end of the night, and I pulled it with a single pair of tongs. You have never seen meat this tender. I could have cried.

So, to summarize, hooray for pulled pork, boo on chopped pork. The barbecue was a complete success, and as I pointed out several times, I got to sit around all day in my boxers watching Family Feud, and still be the hero of the night. There were also side dishes.

Good night, America. You’re welcome for this wisdom. Use it well.