Cooking: Kentucky Smoked Pork Barbecue
Volume 49, Issue 9
By Michael Safdiah

Doug was here at Happy House visiting from Louisville, and decided to teach me how to make his wonderful pork barbeque. His virgo-esque attention to detail and his caring manner when he lovingly makes this dish makes it one of the best things I've ever eaten. That and his smoked turkey.

This dish is perfectly suited to doing at the beach house since the smoking is out of doors, and it's perfect casual summer eating.

Doug supervised, and jokingly kept calling me “boy” in his rich Kentucky accent; I knew we were in for a good old time. I love assisting a master chef at whatever he is doing. Get a Boston pork butt, really a shoulder bone in, and score it deeply with a knife.

Make a dry rub*. Make plenty, and rub the meat well so the rub covers the meat all over and deeply. You are going to use your hands here; get into it.

Make deep cuts into the meat and place apple slices into the cuts, and also garlic slices. Don't skimp.

Allow the meat to marinate in a plastic bag in the fridge for a few hours, maybe four. Turn several times.

Into a tightly covered roaster—use the rack—and a 200 degree oven place the meat and the juices from the marinade also a cup of strong coffee, and cover and bake till the meat falls off the bones. This could take eight to ten hours. Ours took ten hours at an average of 250 degrees. I came damn close to overcooking it. Doug went to sleep, I awoke at 1:30, the aroma filling the house.

Remove the meat to a roasting pan and cool it. Separate and reserve the juices. Give the bone to the dog. The bone proved out to be a bad idea since she had problems for two days afterward, but oh boy did she love that bone.

Pull the meat from the bones, and “fork pull” the pork into shreds. Discard the fat from both the meat and the sauce. There will be plenty of fat. Discard the apple pieces; they don't have any flavor any longer.

Season the sauce with water if needed and some good barbeque sauce and some Chinese chili garlic paste for heat, and some sesame oil. (soy sauce was not necessary since the sauce was already salty), but you should check. Soy sauce makes a nice addition. So does some small amount of liquid smoke, but as it turned out the mesquite smoke more than gave it the smoky flavor required.

Moisten the meat with the sauce, and build a smoker. Use charcoal with mesquite chips soaked in water for an hour at least. Smoke it (to two hours). Push the lit coals to one side and the meat on the other, to keep the meat away from the heat, and the water pan underneath the meat. You need the pan of water in the smoker to help keep the moisture up.

In the utility closet in my house we found some mesquite briquettes and mesquite chips which had been there for years just waiting for this moment. We soaked the chips and then spread them over the coals. The treasures that closet holds!

Turn the meat several times while smoking to let the surface get the fullest effect of the smoke. Keep adding sauce as it evaporates. Let meat rest until ready to serve. Slowly reheat keeping moist with the sauce.

We set our smoker on the sand at the edge of the bay, we were buck naked under the hot sun; Doug likes to be a nudist when he comes here. The fire wouldn't get going quickly enough. We were getting smoke all over ourselves and in our eyes, which burned. We smelled like the house had burnt down. We were covered in sweat and ashes, but it all turned out to be worth it. We had a ball, or at least I did. It was my first experience at smoking, and I loved it.

Tasting the meat was euphoric. We made sandwiches filled with the saucy moist pork, and stuffed our faces, and I ran over to the meat market to let Eddie our butcher taste what we had done. One look at the smile on his face told us we done good.

On the way out of the Pantry we saw Tommy, and of course tasted him on the meat. He swoon-smiled, saying, “It tastes like home”. That was all I needed to hear.

BBQ DRY RUB

4 T BROWN SUGAR

2 T COARSE SALT

3 T CHILI POWDER

2 T GARLIC POWDER

2 T ONION POWDER

1/2 TSP CAYENNE

2 TB GROUND PEPPER

3 TB GROUND CUMIN

2 TB OREGANO

2 TB THYME

2 TB HICKORY SMOKE SEASONING

2 TB WHITE SUGAR

1 TB GROUND CORRIANDER

1 TB GROUND GINGER

1/2 TB GROUND CLOVE

1/2 TB GROUND CINNAMON

1/2 TB GROUND NUTMEG

1 TB GROUND CARDAMOM

Enhance with Masterpiece BBQ sauce and toasted sesame oil.