Daughters Bacon - 2016.06.17

Last night on the way home from work I stopped at the local Costco in Wilsonville Oregon and bought a 10 1/2 lb pork belly and  a twin-pack of Swift Premium pork shoulder roasts.  After dinner I helped my daughter Willow get the pork belly in the cure.  She used the following recipe:

• 1 cup dark brown sugar
• 3/4 cup kosher salt
• 1-1/2 tsp pink curing salt
• 1/2 cup coarse Malabar pepper

This was the same recipe we used 3 weeks ago.  She added two  additional things:

• 1/3 cup of Lawry's Sweet Basil, Citrus & Garlic rub
• 1/4 cup minced/dried onions.

She mixed the ingredients in a stainless steel bowl.  She split the pork belly into roughly 3 equal pieces, each placed in a 1 gallon storage bag.  Willow placed 1/4 cup of rub on each side of each piece of pork belly.  She sealed each and double-bagged each piece of pork belly and placed it in the garage refrigerator.  This will will spend the next 6 days curing. 

Prior to smoking the pork to create bacon, I think we will try something a little different.  After rinsing the belly to remove the extreme saltiness, we will mix a brown sugar/pepper dry rub.  We have been trying to create a pepper style bacon.  The flavor of the cure works well but the flavor of the pepper doesn't make it through the process to the meat.

Picnic Roast - Pulled Pork - 2016.06.05

Yesterday I picked up a 10-12lb pork picnic roast at Cash-N-Carry.  Last night before bed I placed the roast in a pan and rubbed it down with a mixture of black pepper, salt, and some Lawry's  Sweet Basil, Citrus & Garlic Rub.  Before applying the rub I scored the non-fat side of the roast in both directions to create more surface for the rub to work its flavor magic.  I applied about 1/8" layer on all of the top exposed meat and covered the pan with plastic wrap and put it in the garage refrigerator.

This morning, at 7AM I fired up the Green Mountain Grill smoker and set the temperature to 250.  When the grill came to temperature and was stable, I placed the roast on the center of the rack with the fat side down. I just picked up my phone to check the status of the grill and received a warning that the pellet hopper was low.   Ran down and through some more fruit wood pellets in the grill.  

After a couple of hours I reduced the temperature of the grill to 220.  It's been about 5-1/2 hours and the meat temperature is reporting 136.  The meat comes off the grill at 195 degrees and spends an hour at the bottom of a small cooler while the temperature of the meat unifies.

After that, we pull the pork apart and make some meals.

UPDATE: After a full 6 hours the internal temperature is 147.  I turned up the heat to 250 to encourage getting this done and settled by half-time for game 2 of the 2016 NBA championship.  Here is what it looks like in the smoker at this time:

UPDATE: It's been 6 days since the pork roast was done and not a bit of the pulled pork remains.  The day it was made we served it over rice with habanero/pineapple sauce, raspberry/pomegranate slaw, and fresh cantaloupe/honeydew.  It was delicious.  The meat had a nice quarter inch pink layer all around from the penetration of the smoke.