Getting to know my Smoker

I’ve had a couple of goes at cooking big chunks of meat in my Weber Smoky Mountain but they didn’t turn out quite right.  After a bit of research it appears I didn’t cook them long enough and also had a bit of trouble keeping the charcoal hot enough all the time.   So it was time to try again.

I grabbed a 4 kg pork shoulder from the market, applied a rub and left it in the fridge overnight.  Next day it looked like this.

It was then time to get the charcoal going, load up the smoker, and wait – for 9 hours!

I kept the temp around 120C for the duration, added hickory chunks every so often and mopped the meat with a vinegar based sauce every so often.  You could really tell the meat was cooked properly at the end – it was falling apart nicely (forgot to take a pic though).  We served on rolls with homemade BBQ sauce and coleslaw.

The thing with a long cook time is you need to fill in the time.  What better way than to have a look at some Aussie shiraz.  We lined up 4 Victorians against 4 South Aussies.  Firstly the Vics:

The now long gone Wynns Ovens Valley Shiraz is a favourite of mine.  Halliday raved about the 90 when it was released and I remember I could only source a case from Nuriootpa.  That is now long gone and I have since bought some from auction.  This wine was fully mature and drinking well.  The Craiglee was very good – elegant, peppery and long.  Of the next two, the Mount Langi Ghiran was probably the preferred – it was still showing heaps of fruit, again like the Craiglee, quite elegant and peppery.   A lovely middleweight palate.  The Dalwhinnie was a bigger more robust wine, more earthy and a good way to round out this bracket.

Next to SA:

I was really impressed with The Aberfeldy.  This was a stunning wine with a great nose and equally great length, really good and not too big.  Unfortunately the Charles Melton was raisined and over the hill, a non representative bottle I would think.   The Rockford Basket Press was for me the wine of the day, mellow, seductive, intense and a mouth coating palate that just kept on going. A mature Barossa shiraz near the peak of its powers. How could the Grange top that?  Well it couldn’t.  It was still a nice drink, but it just didn’t bloom.  VA issues? Fruit seemed hidden yet I couldn’t detect any cork taint. An atypical bottle compared with others I’ve had.

So while SA may have had the best wine on the night, Vic was more consistent across the board.