u/daCold_Brew45

I have a competition coming up so I decided to do a head to head taste test of my typical competition pork vs some recipes I’ve used on pork shoulder steaks & see how it goes. I want to preface this by saying this is not a KCBS style contest; every team chooses 1 meat (pork, ribs, or brisket) and you must prepare 250 portions for the public, 6 portions will be for the local bbq expert judges & there’s a people’s choice. With this in mind & this being my second time at this competition I decided to get outside the box a little bit. I injected each butt to speed up the marination process. About 60 minutes before the meat goes on the smoker I remove them from the marinades & add the rub. I smoked the pork butts at 260F on my smoker for about two hours before the bark was set & then began mopping every 45 minutes. All the mops had the same base of red wine, apple cider, & apple cider vinegar & then each had extra spices for their flavor profile (fish sauce, ginger, cilantro, serrano, etc). After 5 hours I wrapped the pork butts in butter, the mops, tiger sauce, honey & cola. I know that sounds like a lot but in reality it’s close 1/2 cup total liquid (not including the hard butter), you don’t want to add too much liquid because the pork will produce a lot on its own. In the final taste test it came down to the Latin & the Competition recipes, the taste was different but the levels of flavor were very close. Ultimately I decided to go with the Latin recipe because I want to present the meat as tacos for the people’s choice vote & it will pair nicely with a lime cilantro coleslaw I make as well as my bbq sauces I typically use for competition. I’m going to do some small tweaks to help the color of the bark like adding more anatto to the marinade & mop as well as possibly adding saffron to them as well (I’ve used saffron with Latin flavors before & it typically works well). Otherwise I’m pretty confident with the product I turned out but we shall see how it goes, you never know what the judges will think 😂.

I have a competition coming up so I decided to do a head to head taste test of my typical competition pork vs some recipes I’ve used on pork shoulder steaks & see how it goes. I want to preface this by saying this is not a KCBS style contest; every team chooses 1 meat (pork, ribs, or brisket) and you must prepare 250 portions for the public, 6 portions will be for the local bbq expert judges & there’s a people’s choice. With this in mind & this being my second time at this competition I decided to get outside the box a little bit. I injected each butt to speed up the marination process. About 60 minutes before the meat goes on the smoker I remove them from the marinades & add the rub. I smoked the pork butts at 260F on my smoker for about two hours before the bark was set & then began mopping every 45 minutes. All the mops had the same base of red wine, apple cider, & apple cider vinegar & then each had extra spices for their flavor profile (fish sauce, ginger, cilantro, serrano, etc). After 5 hours I wrapped the pork butts in butter, the mops, tiger sauce, honey & cola. I know that sounds like a lot but in reality it’s close 1/2 cup total liquid (not including the hard butter), you don’t want to add too much liquid because the pork will produce a lot on its own. In the final taste test it came down to the Latin & the Competition recipes, the taste was different but the levels of flavor were very close. Ultimately I decided to go with the Latin recipe because I want to present the meat as tacos for the people’s choice vote, it will pair nicely with a lime cilantro coleslaw I make as well as my bbq sauces I typically use for competition, & hopefully that flavor profile will set me apart as well. I’m going to do some small tweaks to help the color of the bark like adding more anatto to the marinade & mop as well as possibly adding saffron to them as well (I’ve used saffron with Latin flavors before & it typically works well). Otherwise I’m pretty confident with the product I turned out but we shall see how it goes, you never know what the judges will think 😂.