How To Smoke on a Charcoal Grill. A Delicious Pork Shoulder – Self Quarantine with the M16.

hey everybody what’s going on is TravisMcGee with dem girls today I’m going toshow you how to smoke a pork shoulder orpork butt on your charcoal grill we’regonna do it on the m16 here but youcould pretty much use these basicprinciples for almost any charcoal grillout there I’m gonna show you how tobuild your fire or best thing to doduring a time like this when we are allself-quarantineis you know having the ability to smokeor cook large portions of meat like apork shoulder or a brisket becauseeverywhere I’ve been there’s been plentyof pork shoulders of briskets it’s a youknow stuff I ground B chicken steaksit’s been pretty scarce but large cut tobe easy to find delicious to cook withand you can make so many meals out of itwhether it’s you know tacos you knowplain sandwiches you can eat it for daysso enough talking let’s get to it let meshow you first how to fire up your grillfor it so when you’re setting up yourcharcoal grill you want to set it up forindirect cooking which means you’regonna have your charcoal on one side andyour food on the other best practice todo I’m gonna use one grate on here whichI’m gonna put my pork shoulder on thisover here is gonna be my fire it’s easyto access so when I do need to come andrefuel it over time because you willhave to constantly refuel your charcoalfire or add wood chunks to give you somegood smoke flavor but you’re going towant to maintain it on one side so youcan have easy access you also it’s verygood to have a charcoal grill where youdo have left to right damper controls sothat means I can control my airflowcoming down so I want to be able to Idon’t want to I’m not grilling my porkshoulder I’m going to smoke it so I wanta lower heat I’m gonna target at about300 crank my heat down much slower Iwant to control it most importantly sofor the m-16 we have dampers on thebottom and on top so where I have myfoodto close this damper shut and then Iwant my airflow to come in through myfire and out my lid coming through thisway so I’m going to shut my lid damperdown just a little bit maybe right nowabout half way I’m gonna come around tothis side and I’m gonna shut this downjust a little bit I’m gonna leave thisthe intake about a quarter open and I’mgonna shut this one completely closedleft top completely closed right bottomcompletely closed and I have about halfopen on the right lid half open or so onthe left bottom and I’m going to draw myairflow from this way over my porkshoulder and out the lid here that’s itother than that we’re gonna go get ourpork shoulder and I have about a sevenpound pork shoulder that I’m gonna puton this side of the great first I’mgonna scrape my grapes off and let’sjust get to it alright so temperaturesdown right below 300 I’m gonna go aheadand get my pork shoulder let’s throw iton and I will first do fat side upjust like that way i season it I justuse a yellow mustard around the outsideand then I use a all perkiness barbecuerub or a rib rub and some brown sugarand that’s it I don’t inject it oranything I really like to do it this wayto keep it simple and keep all theflavor on the outside of Bart and whenwe shred it it’s just completely moistand delicious so periodically we’re justgonna watch our fire and keep our lidshutcontrol the temperature and over time wewill rotate our pork shoulder around somake sure it’s cooking evenly but that’sabout it now since we just put our porkshoulder on I’m gonna go ahead and addone chunk of wood you can use any typeof wood you like this particular ismaple chunks apples really delicious aswell and I’m gonna put that chunk ofwood on there and I want it to smolderit’s not gonna be too much smoke it’sgonna create just some really goodflavor on the bar and and that’s it sokeep it shut you just want a little bitof airflow and maintain a steady 300degree temperature and of course if youneed to you could adjust your vents I’mgoing to open the bottom and just alittle bit more and that’s it and I’mjust waiting for now for my temperaturesto go back up the benefit of having acharcoal grill with dampers on both theleft and the right top and bottom isthat you can’t control which directionyou want your heat and your airflow togo in this case since I have my foodhere when I’m smoking it I’m having thatsmoke travel over my food to give itthat good smoky taste if you only haveone damper on the bottom and one on topit’s gonna be a little bit more trickyyou probably will have to just do a lotmore rotating with your food and itmight even be a little more difficultcontrolling your heat but in this caselike the m16 it’s really a piece of cakeand which makes this not only the beststeak cooking machine in thebut also a legitimate cool littlebackyard smoker so when it comes toadding more charcoal very simple andliterally gonna take I not even thatmuch about two three good-sized littlechunks here I’m just gonna place themright on top I don’t want them anywhereover thereand they want to control my heat so I’mgonna play some on top here that’s itand close it up[Music]let’s talk a minute about charcoalgrills charcoal grills are not the samethe thickness of the steel plays a bigpart in it but for me my number oneattribute about a grill is how well itcontrols heat to me is extremelyimportant making sure the gaps are allsealedso being gasket seal like our grills areto me that plays a huge parthave you noticed there’s nothing leakingout the lids that makes it to where youcan absolutely control the temperaturein a charcoal grill if you notice onhere you know I have these damper shutwe got this one halfway open that’shalfway open but you know you can seethe air flow it’s coming here exactlywhere I want it if I had it leaking ifyou see smoke leaking out of places wellthat means you got heat leaking outthere and you’re not exactly controllingyour temperature where you want it to goso those are some key features aboutcharcoal grills to look for okay so it’sbeen about 45 minutes since I put mypork shoulder on I’m just gonna now takea peek and what I’m looking at I’m justchecking my charcoal those three piecesI put are still I mean they look likethey’re barely even started burning yetso that’s perfect and I’m looking at mypork shoulder now so what I’m gonna dois I’m gonna rotate this around andbecause I want to make sure the left ormy side just really cook even so I’mgonna rotate this belt one about every45 minutes to an hour so I’m gonna shutthis get some gloves and it will spinthat pork shoulder aroundopen this up take this[Music]then after we let it spin around willlet it cook this wave about 45 minutesthen we’ll flip it upside down and letit start cooking that way so far it’slooking really good so we’re over anhour into our cooking and you know asyou can see we’re right about that 300degree range where we want to be youknow fluctuates it’s really no big dealespecially when you’re doing a porkshoulder because you just want to gettoo hot too fast but you know if it getstoo if your temperatures will low say ifyou’re like that 250 200 just gonna takelonger so that’s why I like 300 I’ll domy pork shoulders you know because porkshoulders is going to be a few hours andto this cooked till it’s done but onething we notice here is that we don’thave the smoke coming out like we didbefore and the reason is because we onlyadded one chunk of wood when we firstfired up our grill and that one chunk isit’s pretty much all dissipated to smokeso it’s pretty much a bark duck this iswhere you can get creative and it reallyis a personal preference if you wantmore of a smoky flavor well every timeyou add charcoal into here add a chunkof wood with it and you’re gonna getthat smokiness throughout your entirecook if you don’t if you want less thenadd less wood like me I like it in themiddle I do like to taste a littlesmokiness but I don’t want it to bebitter like over smoked so I’m kind ofgonna go half and halfsame principles follow when you aresmoking with wood on an offset smokeryou know if you have that billowingsmoke during the entire duration of yourcook more likely you’re going to have avery bitter flavor in your food andthat’s why in the barbecue world we talkso much about clean smoke when you’redoing a long smoke with wood you want aclean burning smoke it just gives youyour best flavor some people actuallywant a little bit more smokiness inthere and then that’s where you knowusually just by choking down the airflowyou’re gonna get that you’re gonnaintroduce more smoke into your food soit’s complete preference in thisinstance I’m pretty much I will just putbasically a chunk of wood every othertime that I grill and I don’t want a bigchunk I’m gonna try to find smallerchunks so there’s a smoke for too longand but this is another thing aboutcharcoal grilling or charcoal and woodsmoking you know outdoor cooking ingeneral that I love so much is that youcould take the same recipe and try itwith different flavors of wood and itcomes out different just about everytime so today we’re using maple hardwoodbut you could try it with apple youcould try pecan you can do Oh Mesquiteevery woods gonna have a differentflavor it’s extremely delicious and playaround with you know how do you like itdo you want it a little bit more smokyyou want less smoky don’t even use woodat all just use charcoal and have itmore like a charcoal oven so there’s alot to play with grilling outsidecooking is it’s so fun there’s so muchyou can do with it and we have the rightequipment it’s extremely easy andenjoyable so yeah just some more tipsfor your outdoor cooking experiencesall right I just took a peek and rightnow all I’m looking for is the porkshoulder I’m looking at the sides Idon’t want anything to get black andburnt which is we’re perfect I thinkwhat I’m going to do though does I wantto flip it over give it a rotatelooking goodhis bark to look nice nothing burntperfect that’s it Haga see we still dohave our original chunk of wood it’sjust burned through enough to where it’snot producing heavy smoke and you knowwe still got our lump charcoal burningvery slow so it looks like it’s aboutevery 30 minutes of just kind ofchecking and making sure that you knowour fire is burning well andtemperatures are good that’s it in twohours I am now going to throw a chunk ofwood on and I’m looking for somethingabout this size I don’t want it too bigbut not too small this is perfect I’mgonna lay it just right there on mycharcoal[Music]now you can see the smoke coming out soit’s pretty much that instant once youadd a piece of wood you start getting alittle smoke another thing I like to dois get some apple cider vinegar or youcan get apple juice or even water put itin a spray bottle and during yourcooking this periodically go around[Music]we’ll spray the pork shoulderwho helps a smoke stick to it and itjust helps keep it moist we are twohours in let’s give this a check I’mgoing to take this and flip this around[Music]looking deliciousyouokay it’s been a minute other– hour I’mgonna take my pork shoulder so hot flipit back over now this is how weoriginally startedreally goodall right we’re gonna check this againI’m gonna give it one more rotate likeso man we got a really good color on ourpork shoulderthat’s a nice mahogany color which isexactly what we want after this one turnI will take itsince our bark is looking good we’regoing to take our pork shoulder put itin our pan add some juice a little bitmore seasoning to it keep it covered upput it back on the grill and then we’llfinish it off and let’s just check itout just look at a bark for a minuteso we have really good color allmahogany there’s nothing flatlooks very good I think now we’re safeto go ahead let’s put this in thealuminum pan and season it up I now goI’m gonna take my pork shoulder off putit in our pan here you can use any panlaws the pan fits in your in a grill soyou can shut the lid you’re good to goso we’re gonna go ahead and drop it inthe bark looks great and that’s allwe’re really looking at this moment isjust how does the bark look so we don’twant to overcook the outside then whenwe put it in here put in some applejuice a little bit more seasoning putsome foil over it put it in and allthat’s just gonna really start cookingthe inside so let’s get it our porkshoulder is looking wonderful and itsmells even better so this is what we’regonna dowell grab some apple juiceI want to pour the apple juicethat much pretty much about a quarter ofan inch on the bottom and I’ll take alittle bit more of our road up herelittle someone there and then I’m usingtwo so I’m using the hotty tottybarbecue crew 38 special and the hottytotty rib rub for this pork shoulderput a little that adds a little savoryand sweet mix with the apple juice nowwe’re gonna grab some foil just enoughto cover the topnow we’re gonna push this back on whenit comes time to check in temperatureI’m literally I’m going to just grab mytemperature probe and I will probe itright through the top right in thecenter so very easy you know but rightnow just to check we are 126 point sevenso we have a long ways to go but ourbark since we are cooking closer to ourcharcoal and wood fire our barks gonnaform a little bit faster that wood and asmoker but it’s perfectly fine we gotour bar if we got our flavoring nowlet’s just finish it off come back overhere scrape my brakes a little bit putit just like so now that our porkshoulders wrapped its inside our grillwe’re not going to use any more of woodso the reason for that is that since ourobviously our food is covered it’s notgoing to get any more smoke flavoring wepretty much already put that on for thefirst three four hours of the cook sonow strictly charcoal if you wanted toyou could go throw this in your oven setthe temperature of 300 and let it justfinish off but we’re gonna stay true toour cook here with our trusty charcoalgrill and we’re gonna finish it off sofrom this point on I’m just gonna keepprobing it until I hit an internaltemperature to 205 degrees probablygonna take a few more hours but it’sgoing to be extremely delicious so I’mlooking forward to it just like we’vebeen doing checking the temperaturelet’s drop down a little bit we’re gonnaadd another little handfulplaced right on top of our hot zoneall right it’s been a few hours we’regonna check our pork shoulder and I havebeen just testing different areas andwhat I’m looking for is just for thepork shoulder to be very easy to poke aprobe through so very gentle back in noresistance and I think we are there andit’s saying that I’m an internaltemperature of 208 degrees so we aredone so now we’re gonna take this offwe’re gonna bring it inside and we’regonna let it rest for just a few minutesso here we are with the finished productit looks delicious it smells so good Ohwhat we’re gonna do we’re gonna go aheadand just dig right in and startshredding this pork shoulder and you seehow tender this is I’m barely puttingany force at all so there you have itpulled pork from your charcoal grillextremely delicious look at how tenderthis is there’s so much juice it is justcrazy we started with just like aquarter of an inch of apple juice inthere now look at all this juice and howtender this meat is there’s so manydishes you can make with this frompulled pork nachos a pulled pork tacospulled pork and rice you name it you canmake it this is proof you can make youcould smoked pork shoulders briskets onyour charcoal grill just gonna have theright charcoal grill and a little bit ofknow-how but it’s very easy to do sothere’s no reason you can’t make this athome under grill but there you have itgo out there go outside and cook it’sdeliciousgo feed your families and we’ll see youagain thank you