From Down Home With the Neelys by Patrick and Gina Neely
Taste: 4 (of 5)
Difficulty: 2 (of 5)
Time: 5 (of 5 - Took about 12 hours total for me, cooked slightly different than instructions)
Price: 3 (of 5 - around $50 Got a nice pork shoulder from butcher that was rather expensive)
I love hosting parties. Every chance I get I try to host one. While I am quiet around large groups, for some reason I like basking in the chaos that a jovial group of party-goers can cause. I don't mind it one bit. For this reason, One of my favorite days of the year is Black Friday. I just like the movement, the white noise produced, by hundreds of people talking at the same time all excited about buying gifts for their loved ones, and me just behind the scenes watching everyone. (hmm...that sounds kind of creepy, but it isn't) To me, Black Friday feels like a big holiday party out in a mall. I get the same sensation when we host a bunch of guests. I'm just in the background preparing for my own thing, while people are enjoying themselves around me.
Over the weekend, my wife, Karly hosted a party for her school friends. A few things about Karly--she works as a private school teacher and is quite the social animal. She can make a friend faster than you can order some chicken mcnuggets at McDonalds. She invited the entire elementary school teachers and their children to our house for a small barbecue. Don't worry, it's a very small school so we weren't looking at anything more than 40 people. She just wanted to have a nice summer barbecue, let the kids run around through sprinklers, while the parents sat around and had a good time.
When she told me this months ago, I was ecstatic. This means, leading up to the party I get to plan the meal out, usually resulting in some lavish spread that seems impossible for one man to do. However, life happens, and right before the party we were hit with some serious bills. Our air condition broke and our Volkswagen's alternator blew up. I had to tone down all the things I wanted to serve.
So, what could I serve, that doesn't cost too much, and serve lots of people? I've done a brisket before, and ruined it--several times. I'm not good enough for that yet--too volatile. And good brisket can be pretty costly. Burgers and dogs--that's a no brainer, but hardly anything to impress a crowd. But a pig, a big pig pleases everyone. What says summer barbecue better than a sandwich named after it--barbecue.
I'm not a pulled pork man, being from the Northeast, most pulled pork I've had comes from overprocessed pork in plastic containers with "Lloyd's" written on it, or the occasional sandwich at a kitschy chain restaurant. Word of good barbecue only comes from hushed legends spoken by people you meet from the west and the south. Glorious tales of juicy pork goodness, legendary battles of North Caroline vs Memphis. TV is riddled with fat men pulling out blackened bricks of meat that look like a piece of charcoal, but as soon as a fork is stuck in it, the brick just melts into fatty goodness.
I looked through my books, and found one my wife bought me as a gift for Christmas -- Down Home with the Neely's. I've watched the show the book is based on, and have been entertained with the Neely's on Food Network a few times. They always seemed like a happy couple, Patrick always seemed like he couldn't keep his hands off his woman. Surely that makes them good cooks! They are happy in love! They goose each other's butts in the kitchen, and they have a chain of barbecue restaurants in the midwest. The Neely's claim to fame comes from the restaurants they ran in Memphis, and a televised barbecue contest they won. They had several television appearances and eventually ended up on Food Network with their own decent cooking show. (This was before it was a food competition station and they actually instructed people how to cook--don't get me started!)
The recipe was extremely simple--at first glance. It called for one Boston Butt, some of Neely's special spice rub, some Neely's special barbecue sauce, and Neely's sweet and spicy cole slaw. Each of those items ended up being a separate recipe. The good news is, the pork cooks low and slow so you have lots of time to make the additional items--and, you want to make those additional items...no short cuts here. I want authentic Neely's taste.
Their base rub was extremely simple. When I saw the recipe, I thought to myself, "How did they win a barbecue competition with this basic recipe--paprika, sugar and onion powder. And by paprika, I mean LOTS of it. I mean like, I had to buy 2 McCormick containers of it! You are left over with a ton, and if you intend to cook more Neely's recipes, rest assured, you will use it again...it's in like every recipe. I think they put it on their deserts.
Then I saw the barbecue sauce. I thought the same thing--"How do you win a barbecue competition with this basic sauce?" Ketchup, brown sugar, onion powder, mustard powder, lemon juice, apple cider vinegar and worcestershire sauce--and some base rub. No secret ingredients here--fairly standard barbecue sauce. After I made, I liked the sauce, but it seemed fairly standard--like something I'd get in a bottle at the food store--but I like that stuff.
Neely's sweet and spicy slaw was where I think this recipe leveled up. And it delivered on the sweet--the recipe calls for 1 whole cup of sugar. I kept rechecking the recipe..."1 cup???...I mean, am I making kool-aid?" I almost modified the recipe thinking it was a misprint. But I went forward with the full cup--I needed to be true to the recipe. I went ahead added the whole cup of sugar to the cayenne, yellow mustard, apple cider vinegar and mayonnaise to make the cole slaw dressing. As I feared, the dressing turned "crunchy." I don't know how else to explain it. The dressing was so saturated with sugar that it wouldn't dissolve. Yet somehow, it did taste delicious. The sweetness was well balanced with the tart of the apple cider vinegar and the little bit of cayenne that was in it was just enough to give it a slight kick. But what to do about the grit? Pat Neely tells me to "whisk until the sugar dissolves" but it wasn't happening. I even waited an hour, whisking periodically but the sugar never dissolved. Well, if something is saturated and it won't take on more sugar, I figure I'd just start adding water--one tablespoon at a time--to the dressing. This seemed to work, before long I had a nice creamy consistency that I could add to my cabbage. I think I added about 2-3 tablespoons of water.
If I made the recipe again, I'd go easier on the red cabbage. The recipe called for green and red cabbages, but the cabbage ended up looking pink--more red than green. It just seemed like the red ended up so much more pronounced. It had an unpleasent look to it. In a summer barbecue, I just expect cole-slaw to look more traditional, so next time I'll add enough red just to make it look "right." I also didn't flood it with all the dressing. Nothing is worse than overdressed anything. The final product was crunchy-sweet-tart-spicy. It was very good.
So for the pork, the recipe called for one 10-12 lb Boston Butt. That is one large piece of pork! I did pork before but never this big. It did not mention if it was bone-in or out, but I don't think I ever seen a boneless Boston Butt that large. I ended up with a beautiful 9 and 1/2 pounder bone-in from my local butcher with a nice layer of fat on top.
So I get this massive butt home (it really is a shoulder, but butt works for me), and I look at the smoking instructions, and Pat wants me to smoke this thing in a smoker at 275 degrees for 6 hours until the pork hits 165 with a meat thermometer. Now, I've cooked pulled pork before--usually 4-6 pounders, and I would just be getting done in 6 hours. I usually cooked at 250, but thisseemed really short for this monstrosity I brought home. I've already been in that situation where my guests arrive expecting to get barbecue, my barbecue is supposed to be done, but it's about 30 degrees from where it needs to be. To be on the safe side I decide that I would give it 12 hours to cook. If I mess up and it cooks too fast, I'll just reheat--no foul. The other thing that scared me was the Neely's only cook their pork to 165. The only clue the Neely's give about the correct doneness is they say the bone should be able to freely wiggle. Now, I have looked through multiple recipe books and almost everyone unanimously says 180 or190, and I know some people who swear by 200 degrees. I have never seen anyone take the pork off at 165. I could be ignorant, but my gut instinct told me cook until it hits at least 190. So I went with my gut. (ok, ok, I diverged from the recipe, but I had a party depending on getting this right!) I also lowered the heat to 250 degrees.
So at 2am after a late night Xbox One games session of Destiny I fired up my smoker and slapped the pork on the smoker (that's right you slap it!) There is something giddy about firing up that smoker and getting that first whiff of smoke. I own a Traeger, so there is little maintenance I need to do keeping the temperature right where you need it. I just need to keep an eye on it so there isn't a blazing inferno of wood pellets that melt through my porch. I slept on the couch with the door open so I could smell the smoke.
12 hours later, my pork hit 190. It had a bark, the bone was moving. I could tell I did not screw up by how easily my meat thermometer went in as if I was putting the thermometer in liquid--no resistance. Juice bubbled up and over where the thermometer was in. My 5 year old daughter, Claire, saw me pulling the pork off and her tongue wagged out of her mouth. She is a true barbecue girl. She always makes the tongue wag face when she see barbecue. She begged me for a "preview bite" which turned into her begging for more.
I put the barbecue on a baking sheet and started shredding---nice big pink smoke ring. Meat falling everywhere. Juices just dripping over every morsel of meat. I don't know how it tastes yet, but clearly this was cooked right. In fact, this was the best pork I have cooked to date. I put a piece in my mouth. "Ok...it was pretty good but...a bit bland," I thought. I added a dab of the Neely's barbecue sauce...closer...warmer...but still...something missing.
Fast forward 5 hours later, the guests have come gone except for two faithful party goers who were from Virginia, and have a much better idea about good barbecue than I do. A big pile of pulled pork lies left over in our bain marie. The guests were polite and at least said they liked it. I didn't get rave reviews like, "This pork is unbelievable." I reflected on when I made myself a sandwich earlier during the party and couldn't help think it was just a pretty average sandwich and felt a bit disappointed in myself. My wife gave me a encouraging, "Your pork was so amazing." I never know if my wife's judgement is clouded by her love for me. Then it hit me. I know why it was so average. I forgot to put out the cole slaw!!!! I exclaim to my wife and remaning guests, "I forgot the cole slaw!!" Karly's friend's husband looks up at me and has this look of, "Oh, you did have it--I was looking for it." A pulled pork sandwich with no cole slaw is so incredibly bland! I was stuffed, I had a burger and a sandwich, some deviled eggs, and some jalapeno poppers not 3 hours ago, but I had to try the pulled pork with the cole slaw!
It did not disappoint. That delicious formerly gritty cole slaw was the secret ingredient to take this once average sandwich up another level. The acidity of the vinegar in the cole slaw really cut through the savoriness of the meat, as well as adding a nice sweet-spiciness to the mix. I wonder how the guests would have felt if they had this essential barbecue condiment. That brings me to today's lesson: when hosting a party, create a list of all the things that need to be out for the guests otherwise, your famous dish may end up being only average.
Overall, I really liked the recipe, but only once it all came together. Individually, I thought that these components all tasted very average. I am not at all discouraged from cooking from this book. I have had pretty good successes from this Neely's so far. This will not be the last you see of it.
Sorry for lack of pictures of final product. I didn't know I'd be blogging about it, but I will be sure future posts will be more colorful!
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