How to cook it
- Preheat your barrel smoker to 110ºC. If using wood chips (we recommend hickory), soak them in water.
- Mix together pork rub ingredients in a bag or plastic container and shake to mix it.
- Put all injection ingredients together in a bowl and stir until sugar and salt have dissolved.
- Prepare the meat. Remove skin and put in fridge to dry out (we'll come back to this later). Score the pork shoulder lightly.
- Rub in your rub mix, getting into the scoring and all around the entire piece of meat.
- Fill a syringe with injection marinade and inject 3/4 of the way into the pork. Inject meat every few inches until a large amount is in the pork. You can keep some marinade aside to baste the pork if you want to. At this point you can refrigerate pork for several hours to ensure flavours permeate meat.
- Drain wood-chips and add to your offset barrel smoker now if using them.
- Put the pork, with the fatty side up, on the grill and smoke for 3 hours, apply left over marinade as a baste every hour if you want to. Remember to check your charcoal and wood chips every now and then and replenish if necessary.
- After 3 hours, you can transfer your pork to a disposable foil pan. Increase the temperature to 120ºC, and smoke for another 6 hours or until your meat thermometer reads and internal temperature of 90ºC. The meat should be dark brown and crusty on the outside. If you pull at the bone, it should come out easily.
- Take the meat off and rest for around 20 minutes while loosely covered in foil (crust will go soggy if smothered).
- Pull apart your meat, being careful as it will be hot. We recommend using Charmate Shredder Claws, but you can use forks or your hands.
- You can eat the shredded pork as it is, or transfer to a bowl to season, add resting juices or your left over injection marinade.
- Construct your hamburger to your liking!
What about that skin?
Your skin has been drying out in the fridge, take it out and score it lightly. Season with salt and pepper or your rub. You can add the skin to the barrel with about 2 hours to go. This will infuse the skin with that lovely smokey flavour, but it won't make them crispy. To crisp them up you'll need to cut into strips and cook them over a hot flame or in an oven.
