Smoky Pork Shoulder With Chile Paste Recipe (2024)

How many beers do you suggest while waiting for the pork shoulder to finish cooking?

Could I do this on a gas grill with some wood chips?

In barbecue competitions we cook pork butts to an internal temperature of around 200-204 degrees. That way you have meat that’s very tender and not chewy. When the meat is done, you should be able to put a toothpick into the meat anywhere and it should go in and come out like going in to a stick of butter. I recommend you cook this pork much longer to get a very tender butt.

I don't have a grill at all. How could I cook this? Low oven for a long time?

Penzey’s sells the peppers for those who are interested.

Sanity tip: If, these days, you're going to "read the newspaper" in the last stages, you'd better crack a beer or pour two fingers before you do.

As something of a barbecue aficionado who has cooked more shoulders than I can count, I take no issue with your technique nor your rub, although I prefer a dry rub in which the shoulder is marinated overnight. I DO take issue with your timing. One, when I barbecue a whole shoulder, I cook it for 18 hours, starting at 200 degrees and eventually building up to 300 over a 12-hour period. One key is that you should NOT be able to slice a properly smoked pork shoulder; barbecue should be pulled.

Walmart, in the spice section (or sometimes in the Hispanic section) sells a variety of dried chilies by the pound at fairly reasonable prices (about $5-$6/lb). Arbol chilies are hot,pasilla and guajillo chilies medium hot. You can substitute ancho chilies for pasilla. If you have a Hispanic store in your neighborhood, especially one that's heavily patronized, you might try that one.

Winter grilling is essential to surviving it..I've taken to substituting Gochujang for the chilis in this recipe adding some brown sugar and lime juice, mixing but not cooking anything in the paste. I like it just s much and a bit less time inside.

Good question. I use my smoker all winter long, but I smoke by convection. The meat is placed at the far end of the smoker, opposite the end of the fire box. I could put a pan under the grill, but it would be no where near the coals. I don't think the water pan is necessary. I've never found a smoked pork shoulder to be dry. Another method is the North Carolina way: dry rub, and then use a mop sauce on it every 30 minutes or so. Takes about six hours. Look up the 3:2:1 smoking technique.

or just smoke the pork for about a hour or until the coals die (with some wood chips) on the grill, and finish it off in a crockpot.

I grow these peppers (and many others) in my garden, and then freeze them whole for use year-round. Peppers are easy to grow in pots in ordinary potting soil. They need lots of sun, some fertilizer, and water when needed. Plants are often available, or start from seed. Let the peppers ripen, and save some seeds for the following season; you'll never have to buy plants again. I've used seeds that were over 15 years old with great success. Just dry them on paper towel and store in the fridge.

Most definitely. Wood chips will contribute a smoky flavor even more than charcoal will. (The flavor is due to guaiacol, a breakdown product of wood lignin and the molecule responsible for most of the taste of smoked food, as well as aged whiskeys. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoking_(cooking)#Wood_smoke andhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/guaiacol

30 degrees would be Spring in our latitude. I had the gas grill in the garage at the edge of the door with both doors open to slow cook a rack of ribs a few winters ago. The breeze was wafting into the garage. After the cooking was done I had a bit of a headache and nausea that lasted through the night. I correctly self diagnosed CO poisoning and spent a few hours deep breathing outside and recovered.Only do this recipe outside.

I would add 2 items to the recipe1) Good substitutes if all the peppers are not available (I managed 2 in my good local supermarket that carries a wealth of items from all over)2) Very important: disposable gloves while handling the chiles; I washed my hands 2x after seeding the peppers, went to rinse my face (runny nose from proximity) and my eyes & nose were in excruciating, burning, pain for a solid 20 minutes. After that I put all oven mitts, apron etc in laundry & kept everyone away.

I used bone in shoulder and it was great. After meat gone there was a lot of yummy chillied fat left over. I froze it and used it later for turkey chili.

I made this exactly as written for my husband's birthday party - 15 of us, and there was nothing left! People RAVED! And, a guest who grew up with St. Louis BBQ was floored by it. I served with about 10 slow-roasted sweet potatoes (a SmittenKitchen recipe) that I cut in half after cooking and served alongside a stick of butter. I also threw together a bowl of coleslaw (two bags of Costco packaged Asian salad tossed with Sam Sifton's spicy coleslaw dressing). EASY CROWD PLEASER!

Made a few modifications:* substituted ancho and puya for the guajillo and pasillas* wanted something tender/pullable, so: used 5 1/2 lbs boneless pork shoulder; cut in half for more bark / slightly faster cook time; used Weber Smokey Mountain smoker with the drip pan on the bottom rack; BBQ'd 6-7 hours; pulled meat, moistened with drippings (which also flavored a batch of drunken beans); served with tortillas* substituted rain for snowMade for amazing pulled pork tacos!

This is delicious. Absolutely delicious, and the sauce can be easily adjusted to taste for heat,, oniony-ness, sweetness from cilantro etc (I like a nice earthy spiciness for this). Goes nicely with roasted potatoes, or rice, some calabasitas. For anyone not living near a market where you can get the peppers, here is a good online option: https://oaktownspiceshop.com/

This was absolutely delicious! I used a 6-lb. pork butt roast and cooked it in an electric smoker at 275 (max temp for my smoker) with hickory chips. It took about 5 hrs. for the interior temp to reach around 160 degrees. The roast was very juicy, tender, and not overly smokey. The coating and sauce were pleasantly spicy. I served this with roasted Yukon Gold potatoes and roasted asparagus, both of which were a slightly sweet counterpart to the pork and sauce. A keeper recipe!!

There's nothing in the recipe about setting up the grill to produce smoke, e.g. a perforated foil packet of soaked applewood chips set right on the hot coals. Seems to me the "smokiness" comes from the chilis. The point of having a roasting pan containing fluids under the rack in the regular oven is so that melting fat will NOT burn by hitting the oven floor. It falls into the liquid instead.

It seems to me that using a conventional oven would mean a huge amount of smoke to clean up. Did I miss something?

Penzey’s sells the peppers for those who are interested.

Chiles = peppers in my part of the country. They’re dried.

How many coals approximately do you start with ?

This dish is much better made using Sous Vide and a Smoky grill. Rub the Pork Shoulder with salt, brown sugar, coffee, and smoked paprika rub and set Sous Vide at 145. Cook for 24-30 hours then take out, reapply rub (during the holidays I might add some cinnamon. Put on grill off the fame at ~250 for 1.5 hours. For charcoal use lump charcoal, if using a gas grill use wood smoking chips (I prefer applewood, but hickory and other stronger woods work too).

If you roast this in the oven do you cover it?

When I make chili, I reconstitute all of the dried chilis I can find. I puree them up in the blender; use what I need for the chili and freeze the rest for other recipes. If you are going to all that trouble tracking down the various types, reconstituting, etc., you might as well make plenty for the future.

Only found Guajillo dried chilesin my grocery store. So I substituted fresh:2 long hot peppers4 red chili peppers 4 pablano peppersAlong with the 6 guajillo chiles All stemmed and seeded.Since my roast was about 5 pounds instead of 9 pounds, I had plenty of chile paste and pan drippings to use in other recipes!

This recipe requires dried chiles for the paste, not fresh. They impart a different flavour. With the scallions and garlic this is somewhat similar to a jerk rub. And this shoulder isn't smoked, it's roasted in a charcoal (or gas) grill at a higher temperature than a smoker. There is some smokiness from the charcoal but that's it. The water in the pan adds some moisture as the cold outside air is dry. As the recipe says, the water mixing with the juices and rub makes a fabulous sauce.