About 3 days before the Superbowl, I got the ingredients that I thought I needed to make the dishes. I bought a 5 pound piece of pork shoulder and a 4 pound cut of chuck roast. I intended to do a brisket but I changed my mind because I was hoping the chuck roast would be easier to do. I also picked up some coarse salt (Hawaiian salt), pans, foil, and charcoal.
I brought everything home and planned my brine. I found a bunch of conflicting information about brining beef but I thought I would try it anyway. Online, there are a bunch of resources regarding preparing meat for smoking and I would suggest you go there before attempting your own smoked beef or pork. I decided to both brine and cure my beef. For the pork, it would just be a brine.
Beef - Put garlic salt, coarse salt, pepper and honey. Placed all of these in a ziploc bag with water. The picture doesn't really show how much salt was used. I put waaaaay too much salt. I placed the beef in the fridge for 2 days flipping it once.
Pork - The pork was done similar to the beef except I only used salt to season. Salt and water in a ziploc bag and refrigerated it as a brine for 3 days flipping it twice.
After two days of brining I removed the beef from the refrigerator and took it out of the ziploc bag. To prep it for curing, I rinsed the beef and dried it with paper towels. I placed the beef in a dry aluminum pan and covered it with salt. It was put back in the fridge for half a day. I then turned it over and let it sit for another half a day.
Early Sunday morning, I prepped the grill for the smoking. I started the fire, put a pan with water next to the coals and let the grill heat up. My intent was to have the grill hot enough to boil the water so it was like a steamed piece of meat with the flavor of charcoal and wood. The mesquite wood was placed in water for about 15 minutes and put on the charcoal to create the smoke.
When the fire and smoke was going strong, I put the pork on the grill. I tried to rotate the pork every 20 minutes or so. My goal was to sear the meat with the charcoal and smoked mesquite
flavor. After about an hour, I put the pork in a crock pot for about 4 hours. People kept telling me that I could've used liquid smoke. I kind of wish I did one version with the liquid smoke and one with
out to see if the flavor was different.
After the pork was put in the crock pot, it was time for the beef. It was removed from the pan, rinsed clean and dried with some paper towels.
It was placed on the grill in the configuration as shown. Controlling the temperature was really difficult, but I managed to keep it within 220 degrees for about 3 hours. After the 3rd hour, the roast was wrapped loosely in foil and placed in an aluminum pan with some boiling water in it. I then covered the whole pan with aluminum. The goal was to steam the meat in the pan.
After the beef was done, we ended up with a cooked chuck roast and shredded pork.
The chuck roast tasted really salty. I repeat... REALLY SALTY. I put it in water and crock pot it for another 20 minutes to get some of the salt out. In the end, it tasted like a smoked chuck roast. I was kind of disappointed.
The shredded pork was salty as well, but not as bad. It was pretty good. When I do it again, I am planning to use less salt and try and smoke it with taro leaves. Hopefully it will soak up some of the green leafy taste so it will taste more "Hawaiian."
The heat control was pretty challenging for the beef. The chuck was a little drier than I had wanted but it wasn't as bad as it could have been. Fortunately, I had just come off my week long veggietox so it tasted like prime rib to me. In conclusion, I am still not ready to tackle a brisket but a veggietox is the best way to make bad meat taste good.
