The essential pork shoulder

This is the barbecue cut that is hardest to mess up. There's great pork shoulder and there's good, it's hard to make it bad as long as you keep it cooking low and slow.

Today's shoulder is for my youngest brother, who is the biggest fan of my smoking. Hopefully he'll share it with some of the others in the family. I put the meat on about 7 am and will take it off around 8pm. Prepped it with a dry rub last night that was fairly simple, salt, pepper, some paprika, that's about it. I have learned to keep the lid closed on the smoker and only opened this a couple of times during the day, to cut off a sample or two.


Thirteen hours with the temp between 200 and 250. Low and slow. Slow and low.

The finished product looks black, but it's not. It'll be beautiful when pulled. If I did it right it won't need any sauce or anything else. It'll stand on it's own.