Parts of Turkeys and Pigs

Monday at 2 in the afternoon is not the best time to decide you are going to smoke a pork shoulder. Not being my first foray into the greatness of the other white meat (RIP The Duke) I should have known that this was a bad idea. Large amounts of pork at a low temperature takes a while to cook, and I timed Mondays activities very poorly. I am going to go ahead and admit this, I had to use the oven. We will get to that. Onto the meat.

A six pound pork shoulder and 3 turkey legs cost $10 on Memorial Day at Alberstons on Mockingbird and Abrams in Dallas. Put it on your calendar if you are looking for plans next year.


Made my own rub for the pork goodness. Black peppercorns on the left, chile piquins on the right and ground mustard seed at the bottom. Put it all back in the spice grinder and mixed it all up. Didnt use exact amounts and dont think I am going to going forward. This amount was a mostly perfect mix of spice and tang.


Added in a little garlic powder for good measure.


No pic of the shoulder with rub all over it, but I literally covered every square inch. I then patted in some brown sugar on the fat side. No reason for the brown sugar other than I watched Good Eats the night before and Alton was using it in stuff. It's important to let it sit for a while before putting it in the smoke to preserve the juices. The brown sugar was pretty much absorbed too.


Onto the turkey legs. Not much to them. Hawaian/Himalayan crushed sea salt, rub from before and a put on the grill.


Rubbed liberally with a spattering of smoked paprika.






Smoked these guys for a little over 3 hours at 225. Unlike the smoked turkey legs at the fair or other outdoor gatherings, these were not one entire smoke ring. The turkey had a perfect amount of smoke taste and the meat absorbed a lot of the spices. I was surprised to find that the meat had such a spicy taste sans skin.








Back to the shoulder. This was after 4 or 5 hours. At this point of the day a few Silver Bullets had been consumed and the realization that time was going to be a problem sank in quickly.


Wrapped it up at 10:30 and left it in the smoke until Midnight.


At Midnight I admitted failure and wobbled back in the house. Put the guy in the oven at 200 until 6am. Figured 6 more hours in direct heat would do the trick and I was right.


Pulled it out at 6am and the internal temp was a little above 190. Wasnt quite pulling the way I wanted it to, but i wasnt using tongs and I needed some advil. I should have trimmed the fat off the top before pulling as well. But it's ok.


Saved the PSA for a meal to be named later.


The shoulder produced a lot of meat. This is a good sized serving tray and the whole damn thing got filled up. Covered in foil and put in the fridge because it was 6 and I was tired.


Cut to Wednesday night. Pulled the PSA out of the fridge. About 3/4 inch of fat had accumulated at the top.


Scraped that S off and put half of it in a pan with some Stubb's BBQ sauce and some of the shoulder.






Tacos are good.

All in all it was delicious and will be done again. I think a couple shoulders could easily feed 30-40 people. Its a lot of meat. I will be doing turkey legs again soon, they were the big winner of the day because they were damn good and didn't take nearly as long. Thanks to HUGEsmoke for his substantial and important contributions to the process.  That's all I got.

~El Smokeador~

This ain't your daddy's egg

Woke up at the crack of 11:30 Saturday morning with a stone cold craving of some eggs and toast. Went to the store and picked up the only eggs one should buy, Henderson Valley Eggs (youre gonna love their eggs!). I read somewhere (read: nowhere) that there was such a creation that fuses the delicious goodness of a fried egg with toast making egoast? Still working on the name. It's been called a birds nest egg, eggs and toast, fried egg and toast but for the purpose of this blog post we will call it......."Toast with egg in the middle." Inspired I know, but that is why I am head writer for helpmenamethings.com. Head writer of a made up website that has never been googled in the history of Al Gore's internet is not a lucrative position, but I digress. Eggs.

Toast with egg in the middle is extremely easy to make and is pretty self explanatory, but I have step by step directions in case Psmoke is reading.

These are things you should buy. Butter, bread, eggs, and some Sriracha hot sauce. Cigar box not necessary but suggested.

You gotta put butter on the breads and toast it in the pan. I would show you a picture of buttering the breads, but like many things this blog is not about, this blog is not about buttering bread.

Get a glass like this.

Use said glass to cut holes in your TOASTED breads. The s on the end of bread is necessary when making toast with eggs in the middle.

This is how big the hole should be.

Crack an egg and pour it directly into the hole on medium high heat. Since the breads are already toasted, if you get the heat too high it will burn. Figure that out.

(one of these turned out better than the other, guess which one)

Add a little Sriracha to the egg-whites and let those eggs cook.

The middles of the toasted breads are fun little treats that you can add jelly too and eat with your mouth.

Flip the toast with eggs in the middle.

The finished product wasn't that pretty this time. I was pretty hungry and turned the heat up to finish it up quicker. Nonetheless, eggs with toast on the outside (TWIST!) are the epitome of tasty american breakfast foods.

Alight, I just looked at the real big picture and they really do look gross. While I am a master burger maker I am not a pretty breakfast cooker. I do not wear a funny hat so I dont think things always have to look good for them to be delicious. That said, if anyone would like to provide Smokehopper and myself with funny hats, we will wear them and work on dressing things up a bit.

Update:  These look a lot better.

~El Smokeador~