Long time readers will know that beef is my true love when it comes to protein, but pork is a very close second.  I especially love when I find a pork shoulder in my “meat bin” at Jewel – this 5 pound roast only cost me $4.50 and will morph into so many meals.  

My grandpa made a mean pork bbq – but it was North Carolina style – no BBQ sauce, just vinegar, Tabasco, crushed red pepper, and its chopped, served on a bun with cole slaw.  The sweetness of the coleslaw with the tang of the pork is the perfect combination.

My Aunt Martha is the only one in our family who makes it just as good as he did.  So good!

I cooked mine in my Pit Barrel Cooker, which is just that.  A barrel grill where you hang the meat so that it cooked evenly all the way around the meat.  The coals are at the very bottom and you hang the meat on hooks.

I seasoned mine with Dak’s red mountain rub and a touch of salt.  I thought I was only going to grill this on the cooker for the first few hours, then chop it up and continue it in my crock pot with the vinegar/tabasco/crushed red pepper, but I ended up leaving it on the cooker for SEVEN hours.  The temp was 190 when I pulled it off.  Perfect.

Because of the cut and fat content, the best process to cook this meat is low and slow.   It can also be called a picnic shoulder or picnic roast.  Sometimes they are netted to form a roast and you cook it in the netting.  Mine had one small bone in the middle.

I had enough coals that they lasted the whole 7 hours – it was probably about 50 briquettes, which seems like a lot, but not when you are cooking for that long.

Once I brought it inside, I let it cool about 30 minutes before putting it in a plastic ziplock.  Sunday morning I pulled it out to slice up – um, how gorgeous is that?  I had 1/2 a cup of hickory chips (dry) in a foil pack that was in with the coals.  

Holy balls is this good!  My neighbor Charlie (12 year old budding chef) was over when I was grilling this, and since I didn’t take it off the grill until nearly midnight, I sliced some up, reheated it a pan for about 30 seconds on high heat with a pinch of salt and pepper. 

I brought it over to their house for him to try it – Charlie’s Dad texted me and said “holy balls – Charlie said that this meat was better than Texas de Brazil!”  High praise! 

I have so much food in my house from cooking over the weekend, my meat bin haul and leftovers from Easter.  I had no idea what I was going to make, until I saw this Jerk seasoning that my friend Christina gave me.  WOW.  It’s only 10 calories a tablespoon and because it has scotch bonnet peppers in it, a tablespoon was plenty.  It was flavorful spicy, not just knock your socks off spicy.

I sauteed the pork in the jerk seasoning for about 1 minute, then built my jerk pork tacos – 2 points of cheese, the pork (4) and 3 corn tortillas (4) and used my avocado spray instead of Pam to make them crunchy in my non-stick skillet.  Then added chopped romaine, sliced jalapeno and chopped pineapple.  Swoon.

I made a zero point creama with 1/2 cup of plain Chobani and two tablespoons of Taco bell fire sauce.  These are hands down the best tacos I’ve made.  Crunchy, spicy, sweet, creamy.   Now if only I had a kitchen at work so I could make these at work!

Have you cooked a pork shoulder on your grill before? I’d love to hear about it!

Happy Tuesday friends – make it a great day!