Dorito Pork Pie-

I am a bit jealous of the fine food porn I see on other sites. (Food Porn is a descriptive term I got from Anthony Bourdain, describing photos of food that are, uh, inspiring). This is a phone photo, and the best I could do for the moment.

Anyway, it started with a seven pound pork shoulder roast I barbecued for four hours with Kingsford Mesquite Charcoal. I had to go away for a few hours, so I dropped the roast in a roasting pan and transferred it to the oven. My daughter, Beth, oversaw the finish and serving for the first meal.

Several other meals were cut from this good sized piece of pork. Seasoning had been a simple olive oil rub followed by a generous dry rub of equal portions of black pepper, seasoned salt, and Kosher salt. I think the meat turned out well.

After a few days in the refrigerator I decided the meat could use a bit of sauce to bolster the flavor and provide some moisture. I chopped the meat into bits around a quarter of an inch in dimension. In a pan I heated a quarter cup of soy sauce, a quarter cup of red wine vinegar, and a quarter cup of coffee. I added about a half cup of barbecue sauce from the tail end of two bottles I found in the refrigerator. I added the meat and heated the whole thing to a boil using a medium setting on the burner. Stirring steadily I reduced the heat and let it simmer for about twenty minutes.

My first use was on spaghetti noodles. I plated the noodles, poured a generous portion of the chopped pork sauce onto the noodles, added Parmesan cheese and dined quite satisfactorily. The second application was as above.

It was inspired by the Frito Pie. I had some bags of chips in the cupboard, Dorito Cooler Ranch and Cheesy chips. I tossed a bag (lunch box size) of each on the plate, and poured a generous portion of the chopped pork sauce on top. Onto the lot I placed three cheese slices, just those plastic wrapped sandwich cheese slices. I nuked the plate for a minute and a half.

I thought it was pretty good. This was the very last of the meat, and the dog got the bone. He seemed to like that as well. Beth thought the vinegar a bit intense, but it is a flavor I like and I thought the sauce pretty well balanced.

One of these days, Cheese Doodles.

Pork Shoulder Roast-

Barbecue has not been at the top of our culinary experimentation list over the past few months. My kids and grandkids moved back home from Texas, expanding our household and shifting various family responsibilities.

Food purchasing and preparation has fallen largely to my daughter, Beth. Barbecue is not her first consideration when purchasing food or making meal plans, especially with so many young family members as part of the dining experience. After working with a few interesting cuts of meat, the focus shifted to practical daily meals.

Recently Beth discovered that Safeway (the store closest to home) can have some very good bargains on meat. However, barbecue depends on my schedule. I am available to cook only part of the week, being away for days at a time for work. So, preparation of most meals falls to her, and that means kitchen preparation.

"We should thaw out and barbecue that pork shoulder roast." she said the other day. Followed by repeated failures on her part and mine to get it out and into the refrigerator to thaw. So, yesterday being a very good day for a California barbecue, we tried a quick-thaw in repeated changes of cold water over the course of several hours.

I got my coals going, and laid the fire. The meat was oiled with Olive Oil and rubbed with my equal portions (Kosher salt/black pepper/seasoned salt) rub, and draped with bacon. I set the meat on a clean, hot grill in the cooking chamber, and placed the probe in the most distant point in the meat. The resistance of probe placement indicated that the thaw was incomplete, and might prove problematic. I continued, preparing to learn something from what might prove an error.

My thermometer did not even register internal meat temperature. "Lo" is all it said for a good part of the first hour. Not a promising beginning. We soldiered on, adding a handful of coals to the fire every twenty minutes or so. As anticipated, it took a while for the internal temperature to come up. All in all the cook took just a bit over five hours on a six pound roast. I moved the probe once the target temperature was reached. It was a few degrees lower, so I gave it another twenty minutes.

I pulled the roast out and let it rest (covered) for fifteen minutes. As I sliced the roast and cut it from the bone I found the lower part of the roast to be a bit rare. Being pork I felt that this was a bit underdone. I oiled a wok and began frying up the slices to finish. They turned out rather nicely, and the family enjoyed them with a potato dish based on Cracker Barrel cheese potatoes and a side of pork-and-beans.

Everyone satisfied I sliced what more I could from the bone and fried the slices to put away in the refrigerator. The odd chunks cut and pulled from the bone were chopped and fried with a bit more olive oil, some red wine vinegar, and a splash of soy sauce. This was put away in the refrigerator for future sandwiches.

Several lessons here. First, thoroughly thaw the meat to insure a consistent starting temperature and even cooking. Second, it is easy to fix undercooked meat. Perhaps easier than fixing meat that is overcooked and dry. Combining barbecue and frying finished this roast quite nicely, and may serve as a planned finish on some future meals.

Something new-

Not that I have something new. Recently I did another pork shoulder roast, and it turned out very nice. Some of the family asked me to back off on the spices a bit, so I lightened up. With pre-seasoning the meat before cooking there is always the risk of going overboard.

I am thinking that I need to actually plan some more adventurous cooking. I love the standard cuts of meat, and I really like the way the Char-Broil Silver Smoker makes cooking relatively easy. However, I intended this barbecue adventure to be adventurous. So, I must explore some ideas and try some new things.

Tomorrow, provided the predicted rain in our area is not too bad, I will do some pork chops. I have done steaks and chops via indirect heat several times, and really like the infusion of the smoke flavor. I will probably drop the grill grate onto the fire box and do a little direct heat to finish.

I am still seeking sources of charcoal and wood that might be a bit less expensive. So far the bags from the local Safeway are as reasonable as I can find. Most of the specialty houses on the Internet are a bit pricey. Name brand apple wood? Hmmm.

My vacation starts in a few days. I will be away for about two weeks. Heading to Medford, Oregon. I will, of course, keep my eyes open with regard to all things barbecue. I might find something interesting to share.

Pork Shoulder Roast-

It was a relatively small Pork Shoulder Roast. It looked good. Nice balance of fat and lean, and just the right size for the remaining charcoal I had in stock. Cash was a bit short, so the six dollar price was good. I couldn't afford more charcoal, so what I had would have to do.

I rubbed the meat with olive oil and then added my spices. I am still working with the seasoned salt/salt/black pepper mix that has done so well in the past.

The charcoal was loaded into the starter chimney and fired up. The balance of the charcoal was divided between two coffee tubs. I find setting up my fuel in handy containers is, well, handy. I can just grab a tub of charcoal and pour some in whenever the fuel seems to need refreshing. Handy.

I set my thermometer for 165 degrees. I cleaned the heated grate and added the meat. I figured I had enough fuel for three hours. That seemed about right. The charcoal was the remains of my bag of Kingsford Hickory. I had no extra chips, but this charcoal has hickory bits in the charcoal itself, and proved adequate.

At the end of the three hours (adding charcoal every forty five minutes or so) I had used all of my fuel and the heat was declining. My temperature was 154 degrees inside the meat. I could see we weren't going to reach the target temperature, so I set my kitchen oven for 275 degrees and let the meat continue to cook in the barbecue until it preheated.

I transferred the meat to the oven and it reached temperature in fifteen minutes. The end product had a good smoke flavor and was quite juicy. It was very tasty, and quite satisfactory considering the price.

I think the combination of smoker and oven is a good choice when the supply of charcoal is not adequate, and might also be used to shorten the cooking time if you don't have as much time for slow cooking as you might like. I don't know the minimum amount of time necessary to establish a good smokey flavor using the smoker, but some seems to be better than none.

Pretty much just use what you have, and do the best you can with that. Try something new now and then, and learn from your mistakes. So far I haven't had many of those, and my meals have been surprisingly good.

Most important of all, I have had fun.