Hot and Fast Smoking. Even a rookie can cook a pork leg on a smoker

While Pork legs are popular back home for roasting on Sunday with apple sauce and some beautiful crispy crackling, they are not often seen in the grocery store here in Canada.

Why is this? They are often reserved for smoked hams. When I worked at the processing plant in Manitoba we would stockpile legs just for Thanksgiving, Easter and Christmas hams.

It's a shame because legs are such a versatile pork cut.
 

While you can cook a traditional pork leg roast you can also slice the leg meat to make pork skewers for recipes like lemongrass pork or pork satay. I cook these on our propane bbq or in the oven.

Or you can cut cubes of leg meat for kebabs or stew meat or even ground for lean ground pork.

We didn't grow up with BBQ and smoking meat so it wasn’t until recently that I attempted to smoke a pork leg myself.

🍺 Back in the UK BBQ means Bring Beer Quick (because it's going to rain in 10 mins). British BBQ food was always burnt on the outside and raw in the middle. It was always more about the gathering than the food.

After accepting that we couldn't BBQ Carl and I took a course with BBQ Champion Rob Reinhardt of Prairie Smoke and Spice. Yet until last week I still hadn't smoked anything other than fish.

What put me off? It was the Low and Slow approach. When you cook most of the meals in your household, getting up at 2 am to check on a piece of smoking meat is not cause for excitement!

🔥 🔥🔥 Last week a customer told me he does a lot of BBQ competition and that he never does the low and slow cook - he does Hot and Fast! 

OK Bring it on! 

I was going to have a go AND I was going to use a pork leg - I have been told that pork legs dry out on the bbq, so was this going to work? 

OF course it was!

I might be a BBQ rookie but I am using the best pork!
This is our Berkshire Pork, it has built-in natural juiciness!

Here is what I used!

• 4-5lb Berkshire Bone-in pork leg roast - Fat scored

• White oak wood (this is all I had) for smoking

• Spice Rub (See below it is a recipe from Kenji Lopez Alt, The Wok cookbook, Mala Salt and Pepper Rub)

• about 1/4 cup Orange Juice optional

• 2 tbs Soy sauce optional

To make Spice Rub I toasted all ingredients except sugar, allowed them to cool and then ground them with brown sugar.

• 1 tablespoon whole cumin seed

• 1 tablespoon red or green Sichuan Peppercorn

• 2 teaspoons fennel seed

• 1 teaspoon white peppercorn

• 1-star anise pod broken into pieces and seeds discarded

• 4 small hot dried chillies

• 2 tablespoons salt

• 2 tablespoons brown sugar

Here is what I did

1. Preheat the smoker to 320 degrees with white oak wood.

2. Score the pork leg and rub in the salt and pepper spice rub all over the pork.

3. Over indirect heat place pork on the grill for 3 hours or until the internal temp of pork reaches the 160s.

4. Wrap the pork in tin foil and put in a disposable pan. (I used a cast iron Dutch oven because I didn't have a foil pan or any tin foil - don't do this lol it's hard to clean!!!)

5. Mix 1/4 cup orange juice and soy sauce and put in the bottom of the pan.

6. Place pork leg in the foil pan.

7. Put back on the smoker until the internal meat temp reaches 203 degrees.

8. Remove from smoker, unwrap, and let it rest for 45-60  minutes before shredding.

OH NO!

IT’S BURNT!

Now like I said smoking is all new to me.

I was worried about the colour - I looked at it and said OH NO IT’S BURNT - but NO - I tried it, you can see where I took some chunks of fat.

It was flavourful deliciousness that I now know is called bark!

• Yes, it came out juicy.

• Yes it was delicious

• and yes I will be making it again!

It was delicious on a bun with a sweet chilli sauce!

I had a lot of smoked meat so I froze some and added some to a soup. I will be trying it again, with a boneless leg roast - I want to make the smoked ham like we have on the deli counters in the UK. That is my next mission!

BBQ gurus Feel Free to share about BBQ with us!

We would love to hear from you, especially if HOT and FAST is your thing!

Roast Berkshire Pork Leg With Guinness - or your favourite local brewed stout!

This week I have been trying Guinness recipes for St Patrick’s day. I know Guinness goes well with beef but wasn’t sure what it would be like with our pork. It was really delicious.

It was also really easy to make. I used a boneless leg roast but it would work with a shoulder too - you could even turn it into pulled pork - I haven’t done this yet, I ran out of Guinness!

I used a Dutch oven and cooked it in the oven but I may try this in the Instant Pot next time - I am sure it will work great. My Drunken Jerk Pork works really well in the Instant Pot.

ingredients

• 1 pork roast I used a 3-4lb boneless leg roast (To work out how long to cook for Rule of thumb is 25 mins per lb and 25 mins over)

• 1 bottle or can Guinness or support your local Brewery like Rebellion Brewing in Regina - they have an Oatmeal Stout & an Imperial Stout

• 1 onion cut in half

• 1/2 tsp salt

directions

1. Put the oven on to 450 degrees F

2. Score the pork fat - I do about 1/4” apart - and sprinkle with salt

3. Put the onion in a dutch oven with the Guinness and the Pork Roast

4. Put in the oven uncovered for 20 mins then cover and turn the oven down to 350 degrees F

5. Cook until 160 degrees internal temp.

   Gravy

2 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons flour

1 cup pan juices

1. Pour the pan juices out of the pan.

2. Use an immersion blender to blitz the onion into the liquid.

3. Melt the butter then stir in the flour.

4. Stir continuously, for at least 5 minutes over low heat.

5. Add the pan juices slowly to the roux while continuing to stir.

6. Bring it to a simmer, stirring all the time to prevent lumps, until it thickens.

7. Taste and season if necessary - I always add a splash of soy sauce to my gravy

Instant Pot Jerk Pork 2 ways

Doesn’t time fly - we have been in Canada almost 18 years now and we just celebrated our 21 st wedding anniversary. It was lovely to dig out our wedding photos. We had a small wedding ceremony and a large fancy dress party at night where Carl dressed as Henry the 8th and I went as Catherine Parr (the last of King Henry’s wives - I didn’t want to be one of the beheaded wives)

We saved most of our wedding budget for our honeymoon in the Caribbean. It was an all inclusive holiday so all you can eat and drink - soo much that I can’t remember what we ate but we drank lots of cocktails.

I wanted to make a Caribbean inspired meal to celebrate - I have no idea where the inspiration came from to call it “ Drunken Jerk” maybe I have said those words before lol.

I made a drunken jerk pulled pork using the instant pot with one of our Boston butts and used the juices for a jerk bbq sauce and the rendered pork fat to roast the potatoes. Omg it was sooo good!

We enjoyed it so much I made it again using one of our boneless pork legs. This time I used homemade pork stock because I didn’t have any beer.

Both were a big hit with plenty of leftovers.

The pork shoulder leftovers I made pizza using the bbq sauce (instead of a tomato base) I topped it with pulled pork, cheese, onions and tomatoes.

The leftovers from boneless leg were enough to give us plenty of Sandwiches and a huge pot of jambalaya.

I used the Instant pot but you can make it in a slow cooker or in the oven too.

Tip - Cook potatoes in the jerk stock before roasting them - they are so good and why waist all that delicious flavour.

I also froze the left over jerk stock just for cooking potatoes in.

I also did a small 90 second video on Instagram with some of our wedding pics and memories. (You don’t need to be on Instagram to watch it) It should work if you click the link is below.

If you watch until the end - that is what we feel like now lol.

This is us 21 years ago