- BBQing. My partner is vegetarian so I drastically reduced the amount of meat I'm eating. A few weeks ago, I finally made the jump and bought an electric BBQ. Eating a good piece of meat from the butcher on my balcony is amazing
- Tinkering with a Raspberry Pi after years of not doing anything technical
In general:
- Dancing at a concert/music festival
- Listening to music and find new favorites that I'll end up listening on repeat
- Being on a beach in front of the sea, ocean, taking a breath and feeling more alive than ever
- Riding a motorcycle in the spring/summer. I'd love to try an electric one.
Get a big roasting pan, say, an inexpensive granite roasting pan good for roasting turkeys. It will come with a cover, but don't need that for BBQ.
Get a wire rack to hold the meat. The rack will likely be adjustable and form a V shape. Right, put the rack in the roasting pan.
Get a fresh pork Picnic shoulder, ~9 pounds raw. That has the upper bone of the front arm. Higher up is the shoulder and called the Boston Butt. It can also work, but the Picnic shoulder is a little easier in separating the cooked meat from the fat, bone, and skin, especially the fat.
From a Picnic shoulder, might get about 51% of its weight in final, cooked, lean meat ready to eat -- at current prices, cost might be about 22 cents per ounce. My trials and arithmetic have the cost per ounce of cooked BBQ within $0.01 per ounce the same for either a Picnic shoulder or a Boston Butt.
Unwrap the pork (Picnic shoulder or Boston Butt), place it on the V rack in the roasting pan, insert a meat thermometer into the meat, place the pan in an oven at 200 F, and cook, ~19 hours, to an internal temperature of 175 F. So, the 200 F and 19 hours are an example of "low and slow".
Separate the results -- put the meat in containers, say, covered plastic 2 quarts each, and discard the fat, bone, and skin.
Can freeze or refrigerate the containers.
To eat, measure out what want, say, with some little electronic scales. Three ounces of the BBQ meat makes a meaty sandwich. Bring to room temperature, say, via 30 seconds in a microwave oven. Use a dull knife to chop the pieces and have the fibers separate a little like pulled pork. Then chop with a sharp knife to pieces suitable for a sandwich. Add favorite BBQ sauce and/or hot sauce. If want smoke flavor, then use a BBQ sauce with smoke or just add from a bottle of liquid smoke. Likely add some salt. Mix. Cover. Warm in microwave. Eat on hamburger buns or just toast.
East Tennessee likes pulled pork; West Tennessee is happy with chopped pork. Pulled means the fibers have been given more separation. What I have is some of both. With this version of "low and slow", the fibers will be well separated anywhere in Tennessee or anywhere else! The BBQ sauces used in East Tennessee seem to have more vinegar than, West Tennessee.
Notice that this procedure is especially simple: So, no outdoor smoker, no charcoal or other fire, no BBQ rub coating, nothing injected into the meat, no sauce during the cooking, and all the sauce applied only just before eating. To my taste, works fine.
If want, on top of the BBQ in each sandwich, add coleslaw. Simple coleslaw: Shred a head of fresh green cabbage. Add any bottled ranch salad dressing and mix. My experience is that this combination will keep well in the refrigerator for weeks.
Good shredding of just the cabbage alone is not easy to do. If the shredding is not fine enough, then just chop the results with a sharp knife.
Simple! Nearly fool proof. Proven -- I've been doing just this with good success for a few years now, with no more changes for the last few months. I have 10+ pounds of the results in the freezer now!
The BBQ sauce I use is Cattleman's Base BBQ Sauce Smoky in one gallon jugs I get from Amazon. And I add some Frank's RedHot hot sauce intended for chicken wings. And I do add salt and do top the BBQ in each sandwich with coleslaw.
If you do well separating the fat and look up estimates of the number of food calories per ounce of the cooked lean meat, might get a number about 40 -- surprisingly low. However, the ranch dressing isn't just a lot of buttermilk but has a lot of salad oil and a lot of calories per tablespoon.
- BBQing. My partner is vegetarian so I drastically reduced the amount of meat I'm eating. A few weeks ago, I finally made the jump and bought an electric BBQ. Eating a good piece of meat from the butcher on my balcony is amazing
- Tinkering with a Raspberry Pi after years of not doing anything technical
In general:
- Dancing at a concert/music festival
- Listening to music and find new favorites that I'll end up listening on repeat
- Being on a beach in front of the sea, ocean, taking a breath and feeling more alive than ever
- Riding a motorcycle in the spring/summer. I'd love to try an electric one.