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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
Preheat the smoker to 320 degrees with white oak wood.
Score the pork leg and rub in the salt and pepper spice rub all over the pork.
Over indirect heat place pork on the grill for 3 hours or until the internal temp of pork reaches the 160s.
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!!!)
Mix 1/4 cup orange juice and soy sauce and put in the bottom of the pan.
Place pork leg in the foil pan.
Put back on the smoker until the internal meat temp reaches 203 degrees.
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!