Pork Shoulder
As anybody who has read my blog knows, I'm a big fan of cooking things sous vide. It's one of the best ways to get meat to be tender and juicy. Another place on the internet that loves sous vide is chefsteps.com. I have been very intrigued by their Smokerless Smoked Pork Shoulder for a while (they also do a brisket, but the pork butt seemed like a safer first step).
I basically followed their steps exactly. Their webpage is really nice because you can change one of the ingredients, and it scales all the rest to match. My pork butt was only about 2kg so I scaled the entire recipe down 50%.
The first step was brining the shoulder. They recommended an injection brine given the size of the meat. I injected it about 8 times around the shoulder and then let it sit in the brine in the fridge for 24 hours. I think I will do more injecting next time I do this.
Now it was time for the glaze, getting vacuum-sealed, and then into the sous vide at 70˚C for 24 hours.
The rub was surprising. It had no pepper in it, which I thought was interesting. Looking at their brisket rub, it's very similar, but I think I will go for a much simpler salt and pepper. But for the pork, this was a great rub. Lots of depth of flavor. You stick it in a 255˚F oven to crust up the rub and second coat of glaze.
When it came out it had that dark and crusty outside that I was looking for. I think I left it in a little too long as the very outside was a little over cooked in a few places, but the inside was just fall apart, pulled-pork tender. Great recipe!
It's impressive how much smoked flavor you can get from the smoked salt and the liquid smoke. While it takes a long time, it was really tasty. I will definitely try this again, and I'm looking forward to giving the brisket a try as well.