Smokin' Hot!

Don loves to smoke all kinds of meat, and agreed to smoke a pork shoulder this weekend for Sunday's "Pulled Pork" dinner. We don't utilize our smoker nearly enough, but we always promise "we'll do better." This recipe is one he found on the foodnetwork.com site and we made it several weeks ago, but in the Weber charcoal cooker. We went to our favorite Mercado in Oak Cliff (for all you Dallasites, it's the "Super Mercado" on Jefferson near Marsalis)--beautiful meat counter and fresh made flour tortillas always at the ready. (Some day I'll have to tell about Kim and I stopping by for warm tortillas in a snow storm...) Got a 10.5 lb. shoulder after much "translation" help from the girl behind the counter and an older Hispanic gentleman; also got 4 lbs. of their already seasoned skirt steak for beef fajitas and froze that. Back to the shoulder! We also bought a fairly large bag of hickory chips and Don soaked all of it overnight. We wanted to eat around 2 p.m., so we got up at 4 a.m. to get the smoking started. Okay, here's the recipe:
Pulled Pork

Poke 8 to 10 slits in an 8-pound, bone-in pork shoulder; stuff with garlic cloves. Whisk 1/4 cup each paprika and brown sugar, 2 tablespoons each kosher salt and black pepper and 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper. Rub all over the pork; refrigerate overnight. Preheat a grill to medium-high on one side. If using a gas grill, place 5 cups soaked wood chips in the smoker box. For a charcoal grill, toss 1 cup wood chips onto the hot coals; add more hot coals and chips every hour. Place the pork, skin-side up, in an aluminum pan with 1 1/2 cups water on the cooler side of the grate. Cover and cook, rotating every hour, until the meat reaches 180 degrees, 5 to 6 hours. Mix 1 cup cider vinegar, 1/2 cup water, 1/3 cup ketchup, 3 tablespoons sugar and 1 tablespoon each Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper; brush onto the pork every 20 minutes until it reaches 200 degrees, 1 to 2 more hours (keep the grill covered). Let rest 15 minutes. Remove the skin, shred the meat and toss with more vinegar sauce. Serve on rolls.

The only changes we made were: of course adjusted for the larger amount of meat, and, we didn't use cayenne in the rub, but rather Emeril's Essence, which has some cayenne but also other spices. That's it. The mopping sauce is awesome the way it is, and we actually had some left over so we added that to some already made BBQ sauce and it was great.

How can something so ugly...

Become something so beautiful!
I know folks usually like the more runny, vinegar-y sauce for pork, but we're big BBQ beef eaters and insist on a "heartier" sticky sauce.

Just keep the smoke going and make sure to keep the moisture up, both in the smoke pan and the pan with the meat. Kudos to Don for another wonderful "Smoke-Fest!"
Enjoy!