A little follow-up on
my prior post about charcoal types. I have a good sized crowd coming for lunch on Sunday, so I bought a couple of Pork Shoulder Picnics to pull. I decided that the way to cook them would be in the Ugly Drum, but to use straight Royal Oak lump charcoal this time (no briquettes) and with just a small number of Hickory Wood chunks in the top layer of the basket.
The shoulders were about 9 lb each, one about 9 1/2. I skinned and trimmed them of just the hard fat. Did not take the time to dry brine these, just hit them with a light rub that included salt and pepper, about 1 hour before cooking.
One thing I noticed about using the lump charcoal in my Weber Chimney starter was, that stuff gets lit and going in a hurry!
Got the pit running and up to temp and I could already tell from the smell of the smoke that this was a good decision. None of the sour, sulphery smell that I have detected with the briquettes. Even in the early stages while the fire is still building new coals and heating fresh char, the smoke coming from the exhaust was much finer and lighter than what I got last week from just straight charcoal briquettes.
This was early on. The smoke thinned out and became even bluer as the cook went on.
I found that I needed to run both intake vents wide open to get the pit up to temp initially, but after it was rolling well I was able to choke it down to just the one vent with the ball valve at varying degrees of openness same as I have in the past with briquettes. I ran the entire cook with a Maverick digital remote thermometer reporting the grille temp to me up in my office while I worked, and did make a lot of trips up and down the stairs to adjust the ball valve throughout the day, to keep the temps between 225 and 245F.
The lump charcoal does seem to be less temperature consistent, and fluctuates a bit more than the briquettes due to intake air allowed. I can see myself spending the money for some kind of a BBQ Guru to cut down on the intake adjusting.
The pork cooked beautifully, and took ~ 14 1/2 hours to reach 195F internal on the bigger of the two shoulders, and I still had a good amount of the original charcoal load left in the basket.
More BBQ pR0n:
I tasted the finished product and, as anticipated, the harsh spicy smoke flavor that I initially attributed to "creosote" was gone. Just a nice clean smokey flavor. Still spicy in the outer pieces of bark, but not harsh, and none of that tingling on your lips and tongue that I am sensitive to.
All in all I am one happy
camper smoker. I'll be using only lump charcoal from now on in both pits. The UDS is great for the really long smokes, and the OK Joe offset has more grille space and easier tending of the meat for shorter cooks. My friends and neighbors probably think I'm a lunatic with all the grilles set up outside.
