And the smoke? Well the smoke is the whole point of barbecuing in the first place, otherwise you could just as easily use a slow cooker. The thing is, to do this right, you really need a smoker, or a barbecue with a separate box for wood chips. I don’t have either. I may get a smoker at some point, but at the moment, I do have a perfectly functional 2-burner gas grill. The good news is that you can indeed achieve a pretty decent barbecue with your grill, if you watch the temperature and keep up the smoke. It just takes a big more finagling and a lot more attention. I’ve barbecued a half dozen pork shoulders on my grill over the last few weeks, just to get the method solid. What follows is the approach I used to get the best results. I found this grill method works best with a 4 pound Boston butt shoulder roast, instead of an 8 pound picnic shoulder roast. With an 8 pound roast you are basically getting up really early in the morning to hopefully have the meat done by dinner time. With a 4 pound roast, or two 4 pound roasts cooked at the same time, the whole timing of the barbecue is more manageable. The meat requires several hours of smoking to get infused sufficiently with smoke flavor. After that, it’s just easier to finish, wrapped in foil, in a 300°F oven. It’s hard to maintain a consistent low temperature on a grill, gas or charcoal. Wrapping in foil in the oven helps to capture all of the juices and rendered fat from the last hour or so of cooking. With a good rub, and a long smoke, barbecue sauce isn’t really necessary. But do feel free to add some of your favorite barbecue sauce at the end, when you’ve pulled the pork apart. Any experienced grill barbecuers out there? I’d love to hear your tips for perfecting barbecued pork shoulder on a grill.
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If using a rub, you’ll need to get the rub on the night before and refrigerate. Cooking a 4 pound roast, allowing time for the barbecue to heat up and for the meat to rest once done, can easily take 9 hours, so start early in the morning if you want to have the roast done in time for dinner. You need to keep smoke on the meat for at least 4 hours for a 4 pound roast. If the roast isn’t done after 6 hours, finish it in the oven, wrapped tightly in foil to hold in the moisture. Two rub recipes are provided here. Pick one for a 4 pound roast, or if barbecuing two roasts, try one each.
2 tablespoons brown sugar, packed 2 tablespoons white sugar 2 tablespoons paprika 1 tablespoon kosher salt 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin 1 1/2 teaspoons garlic powder 1 1/2 teaspoons chipotle chili powder 1 1/2 teaspoons black pepper
Santa Maria Rub (enough for a 4-pound roast)
1 tablespoon salt 1 tablespoon finely ground black pepper 1 tablespoon garlic powder 1 tablespoon onion powder 1 teaspoon cayenne 1 tablespoon dried oregano 1 teaspoon dried rosemary (or fresh, finely minced) 1/2 teaspoon dried sage 1/4 teaspoon sugar
Rewrap it in the butcher paper or wrap it in plastic and place it in a pan (to catch any liquid that may drip out), and refrigerate it overnight. I think it helps to have a mix of sizes, from small chips to larger (1-inch x 2-inch) chunks. The smaller chips will get smoking more quickly, but will burn out more quickly too. The larger chunks will take longer to catch, but last well past when the smaller chips have burned themselves out.
The day of:
Now, if you forget to do this, which I have done, you can still go ahead and BBQ it. You’ll likely be finishing it in the oven anyway. It will just take a bit longer to cook. Depending on the structure of your grill, you may want to remove the “flavor bar”, the thin metal piece with lots of holes in it that sits over the burner. The wood chips will smoke more easily if they lay in a (fireproof metal or foil) container directly on the burner. Place the boat directly on the burner on the “hot” side of the grill if you can (otherwise place on the flavor bar). Turn the grill on to medium flame, cover the grill and let it heat up until the the wood chips start smoking. You’ll either see smoke coming out of the grill, or if you raise the lid, you’ll see smoke coming out of the wood chip boat. You should see and smell the smoke. You’ll be replenishing the wood chips periodically for the next several hours so put more dry chips into water to soak if needed. Cover the grill, lower the flame, and let the cooking begin. The temperature you want to maintain ideally is 225°F. Try to keep it close to that temperature, within a range of 210°F to 240°F. If the temperature goes too high, the roast may dry out. If it’s too low, it will take forever to cook. Check if the temperature is being maintained between 210°F and 240°F, and check to make sure the chips are still producing smoke, every half hour. About once an hour you will likely need to replenish the chip boat with more wood chips. Resist the temptation to open the grill more than once an hour. Every time you open the grill the inside temperature drops and you increase your overall cooking time. I found the best way to check the temperature, since I don’t have a gauge in the grill itself, is to put an instant read meat thermometer into an opening in the hood on the meat side (cool side) of the grill, and just keep checking it. Make sure sensor tip of the probe is not touching the meat itself. You want to avoid opening up the hood too often, because every time you do that, you lose heat. Of course, if your gas grill gets too hot, opening the hood can cool it down quickly. Expect a minimum cooking time, if you have been diligent at maintaining a 225°F, of 90 minutes per pound. So if you are cooking a 4 pound roast, total cooking time will be at least 6 hours (and easily more). An 8 pound roast will take at least 12 hours of cooking time. If you want to cook 8 pounds of pork shoulder more quickly, I recommend starting with two 4 pound roasts, spaced on the grill a few inches apart, which will cook in just a little more time than an 8 pound roast. If after 6 hours of cooking, if the meat hasn’t reached 195° internal temp (usually after 6 hours, the internal temp on my roasts is about 155°F), my recommendation is to remove it from the grill and finish in the oven. To finish in the oven, wrap the roast in aluminum foil to help prevent it from drying out in the oven, and place it in a roasting pan, in a 300°F oven. Cook until the internal temperature of the roast reaches 195°F. If your starting internal meat temperature is 150°F or so, this can take anywhere from an hour to two hours. When it reaches temperature, remove the roast from the oven and let rest for at least 30 minutes, up to an hour. Serve on a bun with or without sauce, and with or without coleslaw. Also great with grilled or raw pineapple.
