Ingredients

• 4000g Pork shoulder
• BBG Glaze
• House Rub

Brine

• 8kg Cold water
• 240g Smoked salt
• 160g Brown sugar
• 120g Liquid smoke
• 20g Prague Powder No. 1 (Optional)

Procedure

Make the Brine

1. Whisk all brine ingredients together in a tub large enough to accommodate the brine and the shoulder, completely dissolving the salts and sugars. Don’t worry about the tiny black specks. Those are bits of carbon from the smoked salt that will be fine as they are.

Brine the Shoulder

1. Set the pork shoulder on a sheet pan.
2. Fill a syringe with brine—you’ll be injecting about a liter of brine into the meat, but you want to distribute it evenly. For a cut this size, inject it in about 15 evenly-distributed spots at varying depths, then let it soak in the brine tub for 24 hours.

Add Prague Powder No. 1 (optional)

1. This is totally optional but, you know, fun. If you want to create a smoke ring—the pink rim at the outer edge that forms when you cook meat in a smoker—here’s how to do it:
2. Scoop a ladle of brine into a small bowl and add the Prague powder No. 1. Whisk until incorporated and return the mixture to the brine.
3. Return the shoulder to the brine, and allow it to rest there two to three more hours. (Note: If you leave it longer than that, you’ll get a very thick smoke ring.)

Cook the Pork

1. Preheat the sous vide water bath to 140 °F / 60 °C. (Note: For that fall-apart texture that makes great tacos and pulled pork, set the temperature to 158 °F / 70 °C.)
2. Take the pork shoulder out of the brine, pat it dry with a paper towel, then brush a healthy coat of glaze all over it. Reserve the remaining glaze in the refrigerator.
3. Place the glazed pork shoulder into an appropriate-sized ziplock or vacuum-sealed bag. Submerge in the water bath and cook for 24 hours.Tip: With long cook times like this, it’s always a good idea to cover your water bath with plastic wrap or foil to minimize evaporation.
4. When shoulder has cooked, remove it from the bag and pat it dry. Apply glaze one more time, brushing the entire surface as you did earlier.
5. Dust the glazed surface of the pork with a healthy coating of rub. You’ll have more than you need, and you can use as much or as little as you’d like, depending on how pronounced you’d like the flavor to be.
6. Preheat convection oven to 255 °F / 125°C. (Note: If you don’t have a convection oven, consider placing a spoon in the oven door to prop it slightly open. This will allow for the unwanted moisture to escape from the oven.)
7. Bake the pork shoulder for 3–4 hours.

Cook’s Notes

Curing salts: This recipe includes the optional step of using nitrites to create the appearance and flavor of a traditional smoke ring. The nitrites can be found in the curing salt we use, called Prague powder No. 1. It works because the nitrites in the curing salt slowly decompose into nitric oxide, which reacts with myoglobin in the meat to create the telltale pink color of traditional wood-smoked shoulder (with traditional barbecue, burning wood creates nitric oxide directly).

When adding the curing salts to the brine, it’s important that the brine not be too acidic. Ours isn’t, but proceed carefully if you decide to blaze your own trail. A highly acidic solution will cause the curing salts to rapidly decompose into nitric oxide, which is dangerous as a concentrated gas. Don’t add vinegar to the brine, and never mix liquid smoke (which is acidic) directly with curing salts. (It’s okay to add curing salts to a watered-down solution that includes some liquid smoke, as we do in this recipe.) When in doubt, just follow the recipe carefully. If you’re going to add any acid, feel free to ask about safety in the comments.

Brining: We use injection brining. Yup, you’ll need a syringe, but don’t worry, they’re easy to buy and easy to use. Just inject your meat, and move on with your meal. You can totally go with the traditional method—submerging meat directly in brine—but the drawback is it takes a long time for the brine to penetrate through the large cut of meat. Here, you’d need to wait six days.

Cooking temp: We cook the shoulder at 140 °F / 60 °C to achieve a steak-like texture. For that fall-apart texture that makes great tacos and pulled pork, set the temperature to 158 °F / 70 °C.

Finishing temp: We finish the shoulder in the oven for 3–4 hours, cooking it slowly to allow a rich bark to form on the outside of the meat. If you are short or time, however, you can crank the oven up to 325 °F / 163 °C and bake it for 1 hour. You’ll still get a good bark, but you may run the risk of overcooking your meat around the outside. Don’t worry, it will still be amazing.