Sunday, October 18, 2009

125 Pounds of Pulled Pork!!


Yesterday Saturday, October 17th was the annual Harvest Festival to benefit St. Pius V School in Providence, RI. This was our second year participating with our booth “Hog Heaven”. A friend of ours who is in the meat business generously donated 125 pounds of boneless pork shoulder the buns were donated by a local bakery and we bought all the ingredients for the BBQ sauce so 100% of the proceeds went to the school! We raised $700+!!

In preparation, one week before we made the BBQ sauce this will allow the flavors to marry. We used one gallon of ketchup, the zest of 4 limes and the juice of 6, ½ cup of Triple Sec, ¾ Cider Vinegar, 2 tablespoons of Cinnamon, 1 tablespoon of Allspice, 2 teaspoons of Cumin, Coriander and Chili Powder and one cup of brown sugar. We let this sit in a bowl for one day and bottled it.

On Friday; the day before the event we prepped the meat by trimming some of the fat but not all – Fat = Flavor!! The meat was rubbed with a dry rub mix of:

4 Cups of Brown Sugar
1 Cup Kosher Salt
¾ Cup of Cinnamon
2 Tablespoons of Allspice, Onion Salt and Chili Powder
1 Tablespoon of Cumin

The fire was started in the wood fired brick oven and allowed to burn for 2 hours. We removed most of the coals and put the meat in the oven, the oven was about 500F. The meat was in disposable aluminum roasting trays then placed in metal roasting pans, this was done for ease of cleanup. We then added to the pile of hot coals one bag of mesquite wood chips that had been soaked in one bottle of Crown Royal whiskey. Closed the oven up at 9pm leaving the door slightly ajar to allow for smoking of the chips.

The next morning at 9 am, we unloaded the oven and drained the juices that colleted in the roasting pans into a pot. We transported the meat to the festival and fired up the smoker. All but two pork shoulders were put on the smoker. We placed those two shoulders in an electric roasting pan and pulled the pork, as the day went on we would refill the electric roasting pan with additional shoulders from the smoker and pull them. Using the electric roasters the meat can tend to dry out the meat so we would add the juice and fat we had drained off from the roasting pans.

Everyone enjoyed the pulled pork and homemade root beer…we enjoyed making it and the school made money. A perfect day!

CLICK ON THE PHOTO BELOW TO SEE THE ALBUM

2009 St Pius Harvest Fest