One of my favorite pastime is smoking meats, I enjoy smoking Baby-back ribs and pulled pork. The Boston butt or paleta de puerco is my favorite part of the pork to smoke. The Boston but is a cut of meat from the upper part of the shoulder. It is also known as "Boston butt" in the US, or "pork shoulder on the bone". The cut is known as paleta de puerco, Lechon asado or pernil, in the Caribbean or Latin American countries. This cut of meat is usually best to make pulled pork sandwiches or to eat alone with rice, typically Cubans eat it with Congri rice and Yuca and Mojito (Mojo). The American way is to eat it with coleslaw,BBQ baked beans, corn bread, potato salad or on a round bun with a little Coleslaw.
There are many ways to prepare the meat, I like to use a dry rub and later inject the meat with homemade mojo to make sure the meat stays moist during the cook.
The rub down
In a large bowl mix the following spices, add these slowly about teaspoon at a time and stir them together they all should be combined and become one. Transfer your mix of spices to a shaker, usually, I save all my large spice containers for this purpose.
Ingredients
- Kosher salt
- Black pepper
- Garlic
- Smoked paprika
- Onion powder
- Cumin
- Cayenne Pepper
- Dry mustard powered
- Honey Sriracha
- Yellow Mustard
- Brown sugar -This will help to create a caramelized crusty exterior (bark). This is where the flavor combined with the smoke of the variation of the wood chips you utilize during your cook.
Start by placing the pork butt in a flat baking pan and pat down the meat to make sure all the moister has been soaked up. You can do this with regular bounty paper towels. Remember to pat dry and remove any excess water. Rub the pork butt with the yellow mustard this will help the rest of the ingredients to stick to the meat. When the meat is all rubbed with the yellow mustard now you can sprinkle the dry rub evenly over the meat.
HOW TO MAKE HOMEMADE CUBAN MOJO MARINADE
Ingredients
3 Oranges squeezed
5 sour oranges squeezed
5 garlic gloves mashed until you get a creamy paste
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon black pepper
2 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil
1 lime or lemon, and mix all ingredients and let sit
In the mix
You will need a Motar, to chop or mash the garlic until it's smooched up ad a bit of Kosher salt and a bit of olive-oil and until you get a creamy paste from the garlic. Once that’s done, add the garlic into a large bowl ad the oregano, cumin, salt, pepper, sour orange juice, orange juice, lemon juice, lime juice, and the remainder of the olive oil. Cover and shake, until well combined.
Injecting the meat
After your mojo is all complete, you can now inject the pork butt. Remember to save some mojito to drizzle on the meat at the end of the cook.
The Cook
Place the pork butt, fat side up, in a preheated 225 to 250 degree F smoker for 10 1/2 hours, during the smoking process, leave the smoker closed for the first 2 hours and then spray the pork with a small amount of apple juice or cider every 2 hours thereafter. When the porks internal temperature reaches 145 wrap up the pork in aluminum paper foil or brown butcher paper and place back into the smoker until the internal temperature reaches 190 to 200 degrees F. You always want to keep an eye on other factors like the bone popping out, and how easy you can pull the meat apart.
Smoking a Boston Butt low and slow produces will give you the best results, but this takes a lot longer than you think. Smoking the meat at about 225-250 degrees takes between 1.5 and 2 hours per pound of uncooked meat. So if you have a 7 pound uncooked Boston Butt, it could take up to 14 hours to be done.