Bubba Tom's Eastern North Carolina Style Barbeque Long Version
Boston Butts & Picnic 4 tb Cayenne Pepper Flakes
-Shoulders, smoked 8 Bulbs garlic
---------------------------------PAN SAUCE---------------------------------
12 oz Apple Cider Vinegar Salt
2 tb Cayenne Pepper Flakes Water
"INFUSION" TECHNIQUE FOR HOMEMADE EASTERN NORTH CAROLINA STYLE BARBEQUE
Tom "Big Heat" Solomon bigheat@earthlink.net
I: INTRODUCTION:
Eastern North Carolina style barbeque is, by most accounts, the oldest
style of barbeque in the United States. Originating during Colonial times
in the coastal regions of Virginia and the Carolinas, it endures and
thrives today in the eastern third of the state of North Carolina.
According to Vince Staten and Greg Johnson, this style of barbeque
"originated in those days when people thought tomatoes were poisonous and
refused to eat them. When the early settlers wanted a seasoning for their
barbequed pig, they chose English ketchup, a vinegar seasoned with oysters
and peppers and other spices, but containing no tomato."
Staten and Johnson observe that "[today] Down East they cook the whole hog,
with no baste, over hickory coals, then 'pick' the meat off the bone, chop
it into fine hunks, and coat it with a thin, hot vinegar-based sauce."
Since cooking a whole hog is not a valid option for most home barbequers, I
have come up with a three-step "infusion" technique that yields a
reasonable facsimile of Eastern North Carolina style barbeque.
II: EQUIPMENT:
The recommended smoker for making homemade Eastern North Carolina style
barbeque is a horizontal wood-fueled smoker with an offset firebox, such as
the Brinkmann Smoke 'N Pit Professional, or similar style smokers made by
companies such as Oklahoma Joe, BBQ Pits By Klose, etc. I have had some
success using the small, vertical, $30 dollar "water smokers" as well;
however, it is an onerous process and does not, as a rule, produce the
deep, rich, smoky results that off-set smokers yield. I have no experience
with gas smokers, but many people have reported good results using gas and
wood chips and/or wood pellets. If you have a gas smoker rather than a wood
unit, I see no reason why you shouldn't be able to make a perfectly
acceptable version of Eastern North Carolina style barbeque. After all, the
key is "heat, smoke, and time," with smoke I think being the most important
element. While using gas will not make your barbeque "authentic" or
"traditional", you are not cooking a whole hog, either, so by all means use
what you have.
III: WOOD:
This technique assumes you will be using wood for both heat and smoke.
Those using wood only for smoke can make the necessary adjustments.
As noted, hickory is the traditional wood of choice for Eastern North
Carolina style barbeque. However, oak is also commonly used, and both are
good, strong, full-bodied woods. From my experience, the ideal mixture is
40 percent hickory, 40 percent oak, and 20 percent apple wood--apple
imparts a distinct, slightly sweet essence that nicely balances the
slightly bitter, high harshness of hickory and the deep, mellow baritones
of oak.
Different schools of thought exist regarding in what state (pre-burned
coals, split logs, or whole logs) the wood should be added to the burn
chamber, and what color the smoke produced by the burning should be--a
barely perceptible blue, or a clean white smoke. Nearly everyone agrees
that the wood should be well-seasoned, as green wood tends to produce a
bitter creosote that can ruin barbeque.
In my experience, the bitterness sometimes produced by a white smoke is
mitigated by the use of the infusion technique. What I do is start a fire
in the burn chamber using plain old charcoal, let the charcoal burn down to
glowing embers, and then add split wood logs, using a ratio of two dry logs
to one wet (presoaked) log. These are not hard and fast rules, however--I
would encourage you to experiment with pre-burned wood coals, whole logs,
all dry logs, whatever you feel would work best for your own taste buds and
expertise. The only word of caution I would add is that if, instead of
using the infusion technique you will be pulling the pork and adding a
table sauce (i.e. having a "pig pickin'"), you would be well advised to use
pre-burned coals rather than split and/or whole logs in the burn chamber.
IV: MEAT:
In a word, pork. Period. No exceptions.
How much barbeque you want to make is up to you. The ideal cut would be
what Dave Lineback calls a "barbeque cut", which is a whole shoulder (a
picnic, commonly referred to in grocery stores as a pork shoulder) and
Boston Butt joined together. If you have access to a friendly butcher, by
all means use that cut. If, like me, you do *not* have access to a custom
butcher, use a ratio of two Boston Butts to every one pork picnic shoulder.
Most retail grocery store butchers will be happy to "special order" a whole
shoulder for you; likewise, they will also be more than happy to charge you
the price of the more expensive cut (typically the Boston Butt) for the
whole thing when it arrives. Picnics, at least here in Virginia, are often
significantly cheaper per pound than Boston Butts, so for me at least it
makes more sense to just buy them the way the retail grocers package them.
Hey, it's all going to be mixed together in the end anyway...
V: THE INFUSION PROCEDURE:
STEP ONE: Bring the meat up to room temperature. Get your smoker started,
and when you have a good base of coals in the burn chamber put the pork in
the cooking chamber--fat side down for the first hour, fat side up for the
rest of the smoking process. Maintain a steady smoke and a temperature
between 220 and 260 degrees at the *surface* of the meat. Ideally, stay as
close to 220 degrees as you can. Have about 8 whole bulbs of garlic
soaking; every couple of hours toss a couple of the bulbs into the burn
chamber [trust me :-)]. Smoke the meat (no baste, no mop, no rub) for a
*minimum* of 8 hours (this would be if you were using a vertical water
smoker, since 8 hours is about the outside limit of what you can get from
those units in a single session). Ideally, you should smoke the meat for
between 10 to 12 hours. Beyond that, I have found you begin to run into
diminishing return in regards to smoke penetration of the meat.
STEP TWO: Transfer the meat to a large, covered Dutch Oven. Put a little
bit of water and apple cider vinegar into the bottom of the oven so that
the pork does not dry out. You can leave the oven in the smoker, or bring
it inside and put it in your range oven. Bake the pork at 275 degrees for
an additional 2 hours or so, until the internal temperature of the pork at
it's thickest point reaches 160 degrees. The pork should be separating from
the bone at this point.
STEP THREE: Let the pork cool until you can handle it without burning your
fingers. Pull the pork into thumb sized chunks, discarding as much fat and
gristle as you can. In a large cast iron skillet, pack about two or three
pounds of pulled pork. Make a finishing sauce of 16 ounces good quality
apple cider vinegar and 1-2 tablespoons cayenne pepper flakes (this is a
rather fundamentalist finishing sauce--by all means feel free to experiment
with other variations of Eastern North Carolina sauces if you desire
something a bit more elaborate). Dissolve 2 tablespoons of salt into 2-3
cups hot tap water and pour this over the pulled pork. Add 8 ounces of
finishing sauce, turn the heat to medium, and cook the liquid down by about
a third. Add another 4 ounces of finishing sauce, and cook the liquid down
some more, stirring frequently with a spatula so that Mr. Brown and Miss.
White each spend some good quality time together in the sauce. When the
liquid is cooked down to the point that it *just* oozes over the spatula
when you press down on the pork, remove from heat, and serve your homemade
Eastern North Carolina style barbeque.
VI: CLOSING THOUGHTS:
While this procedure is for Eastern North Carolina style barbeque, I see no
reason why it couldn't be adapted to other regional styles of barbeque.
Experiment, make improvements, and above all have fun with it. I hope it
works as well for you as it has for me.
Enjoy!
Suggested Wine: Dixie Beer
Serving Ideas : French Fries, Hush Puppies, Coleslaw, Camp Beans
Recipe by: Tom Solomon By Bear on Apr 02, 1997
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