July 13 Part 2

As Brent mentioned in his previous post, he and Michael have dedicated a large part of their mental space to “operation Boston butt”. Sooo when we got home on Saturday we found about 5 kgs of pork shoulder lying on the kitchen table.

No time was wasted, they had decided to execute the project in the mud oven. Brent immediately started building up the temperature inside the oven with a huge fire. The fire was pouring out of the chimney and the front of the oven. So it’s no surprise that in tending this fire Brent managed to singe off a few centimeters worth of hair or as he likes to call it, “an argentine haircut”.

Once the oven was nice and hot, Michael and Brent pulled out the embers to prepare the oven for slow cooking. Brent went to town prepping the meat – pulling the skin back and slathering it in his homemade rub of black sugar, salt, Coleman’s mustard powder, spicy stuff, and a little olive oil.

Mmmmm.

Before the cooking could begin, the temperature needed to be just right. Enter Brent….

Hello friends, Brent here. So as any good BBQ cook knows, pork tissue of the cartilagenous and sinuous varieties tend to break down around 185 degrees F. As you may also know, paper burns around 451and water boils at 212. With no working thermometer, these were my tools. After the massive amount of embers had been shoveled out, I let the oven rest for 15 minutes, threw a piece of paper on the rack and it instantly burst into flames just from the residual heat. Ok a little too hot. 20 minutes later, a new piece of paper was toasting nicely but not combusting as if touched by Satans fiery digits, so we were making progress. Then I filled a pan with water and put it into the oven. When the water stopped boiling I knew I was in the ball park. I waited another 10 minutes or so, and at about 11 pm threw in the rubbed shoulder. The layer of diflected skin immediately started to fry as the fat below rendered making the skin slowly curl up as if opening a can of sardines. I’m not sure I stopped smiling for the next 20 minutes as I watched the fat render and rub caramelize. When the initial sizzling of the meat died down and I was happy with the oven temp, we finally closed the oven, crossed our fingers, and went inside

In the meantime, a friend of Michaels had come over for dinner. A food enthusiast who was dying to cook something up for us. All he needed was four eggs, some port, vanilla extract, some sugar, a little bit of salt, butter, and some dulce de leche. 5 minutes later, we each had a big, fluffy, buttery Hungarian Pancake in front of us.

After indulging in a couple Hungarian Pancakes, we went to bed dreaming of of fluffy pancakes and pulled pork. Fatties.