Tag Archives: slow cook

Smoked Pork

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Take a 7 pound pork shoulder or also known as Boston butt, score the top fat in a checkerboard fashion and rub some of your favorite rub, or the one below, all over the meat.  Wrap up very well with plastic wrap and place in your refrigerator for 24 hours. This will allow the rub to penetrate deeply into the meat to give it good flavor when it comes time to cook it.

The rub for this meat: 1 cup of each white and brown sugar; 3/4 cup of paprika; 1/2 cup of each chili powder, salt, pepper, granulated garlic, 1/4 cup of ground cumin, granulated onion. Mix together and store in an air tight container.

seasoned pork

Set the smoker up for 225F and as a rule of thumb, it ends up being 2 hours per pound for this temp. If you need it done faster turn up smoker to 275F for about 1.5 hours per pound.

I also recommend having a digital meat thermometer with probe and cable, place it in the meat before starting to smoke it so you can track the internal temperature of the meat.

I started mine morning at 6 am with a mixture of apple wood and cherry wood chips that I soaked overnight. Went about my day cleaned the pool, went out shopping, needed potatoes to make potato salad to go with dinner, had lunch, hung out with my lovely wife, cut the grass, tended to the garden and then cooled off in the pool later that afternoon with a beer.

About 7:30 pm the meat thermometer started to ring. I set it to 195F. I open the door and what a beautiful sight and smells came racing out of the smoker! To make sure that it was truly cooked and soft I use the famous Stick a fork in it Method. Stab the meat with a fork and spin it around, if it spins freely then you really done because all meat has different thickness and densities. If the fork didn’t spin freely, it would go back in maybe for another half an hour or so until it would.

cooking pork

Now take the meat inside and cover it with aluminum foil for 1/2 hour to let the meat rest and the juices to absorb back into the meat.

cooked pork

After it rests take the bone out and with two forks shred the meat apart, but be careful it will be very hot!

pork pulled

Toast up some buns on the grill, get the potato salad out of the fridge along with your favorite BBQ sauce sit back and enjoy what you have smelt all day along with a beautiful sun set by the pool.

finished pulled pork plate

Enjoy

Oxtail Stew

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I know that there was a request for this item a while ago but I had to track down a Jamaican woman that used to work for me who made this dish and it was always really good. So here we go. My take on oxtail stew.

Start with 2.5 to 3 pounds of oxtails washed and dried and dredge them in a mixture of 50% flour 50% sugar and sear them in a hot pan on all sides. When done set aside for a few minutes.

oxtail seared

seared oxtail

To the hot pot add 2 chopped onions, 2 chopped carrots, 2 stalks of celery, 2 Tbsp of chopped garlic, some fresh thyme, 17 whole allspice, and I had a scallion kicking around the refrigerator, so I threw it in too. Cook together making sure to scrape the bottom of the pan.

celery and allspince

all veges and spices searing

Put the meat back into the pot and the juices. Now add ½ cup of red wine, 2 cups of water, a quart of beef stock, 3 tbsp of soy sauce, 3 tbsp of ketchup, 2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce, 3 tbsp brown sugar and one whole scotch bonnet pepper. Even though I had 2, I only used one, being this is the first time making ox tails. In retrospect, I should have used them both for more spice.

scotch bonnet pepper

Here is the easy part, put the lid on, turn the pot down to the lowest simmer your stove allows and let it cook for the next 4 hours. Stir once in a while and you will see the broth reduce and thicken by itself.  Now add 2 cans of drained and rinsed cannelloni beans, stir them in and let simmer uncovered for about an hour. About this time make some rice to serve with the stew. I made brown rice in this case.

oxtail cooking

This dish made the house smell so good. When eating just watch out of the little bones, the meat is tasty and just falls off the bone. So sit back, grab a bowl and Enjoy!

oxtail stew on rice