The First Pulled Pork of Spring

Spring has officially arrived in South East England with the first sunny weekend of the year. In preparation for this I purchased a brand new Weber Smokey Mountain and what better way to christen it than with some pulled pork.
As you can see, a shiny and new WSM and actual sunlight, both rare things in dreary England.

On with the cooking.

I like a bit of kick to mine so I mixed a rub of mustard powder, garlic granules, salt, pepper and a generous amount of cayenne chili powder and smothered the pork shoulder the night before and left it in the fridge over night. I've used a boneless shoulder only because I couldn't get anything else around here.

I got up at 7am, fired up my chimney starter. When the coals were going I layered them on top of unlit coals in the WSM and threw in a few hickory chunks. By 8am the pork was on and I was relaxing waiting for my guests.

After four hours it's starting to looking pretty good, but you might see a problem if you look closely. The oven thermometer on the grate is at 300ºF, a fair bit too hot for low and slow cooking. I'd never used a WSM before and I wasn't sure how the ventilation was.

My last vertical smoker (Pro Q) couldn't get enough air to stay lit half the time so I played it safe to start on the WSM and left them open. BIG mistake. After some trial and error I ended up with them between half and two thirds closed.

After nine hours it was looking good, and a quick poke with a finger showed it was feeling good too. You can see the temperature was at 275ºF here, still high but better, I let the water butt get too low. Damn those guests and their interesting conversations, can't they see I'm barbecuing!

It came apart beautifully and that bark tasted great, the mix of flavours was spot on. The bark had a kick and the meat had that wonderful hickory taste.

During the last hour I whipped up some sauce for it. Ketchup base with Worcestershire sauce, cider vinegar, mustard powder, salt, pepper and of course some hot sauce for kick. Half mixed in with the pork and half on the side.

Served with in buns with coleslaw side. There was enough for 12 buns.

One guest who had never had pulled pork before (this is England remember) told me it was the best pork she'd ever eaten, not bad for the WSM's first outing.

Next time on Atomic Barbecue I'm cooking T-bone steaks and maybe some wild boar, just your average Saturday barbecue right?