Pulled Pork on the Kamado Joe – 5-31-14

This weekend I attempted my first low and slow cook on the Kamado Joe. I cooked two 6 lbs pork shoulders that I picked up from the local stop and shop. I trimmed the skin off saturday morning, covered it in yellow deli mustard, and packed on some 344 rub. The kamado joe fired up pretty quickly. I started with traditional charcoal bricks in a chimney, dumped them into to grill once they were all burning good and poured some lump hardwood charcoal on top. Next time i will most likely use all lump charcoal. The brickets leave a much thinker ash behind and on the longer cooks this restricts the airflow. The pork got put on at 11am. I had them stood upright on a aluminum pan. I was extremely impressed with the steady temperature the Joe was able to maintain. It was also remarkable how long the charcoal lasted. The temperature bounced between 200-300 degrees pretty steadily. While i was out for lunch the guys back at the house said the temp went down to 200, they let it be and it eventually climbed back up to 275. i left the top vents open 50% and the bottom vent open 10-15%. that seemed to be fine. I added 2 handfuls of charcoal halfway through the 8 hour cook and i probably could have gotten away with less. the grill stayed hot for a few hours after we took the pork off. My only criticism for the Joe vs the Lang is that it was next to impossible to prevent the direct high heat coming off the coals from singeing the bottom of the pork but. It wasn’t took much of an issue but it is very different than working with an offset smoker. I also felt that too often i was really choking the fire to get the temp down. when the coals get choked they put out a sootier smoke. It did not affect the flavor of the food but it was something i was conscious of. The pulled pork tasted incredible. I didn’t mix in any sauce, just some of the drippings. It was served with my vinegar 344 sauce which was a perfect compliment. 8 hours was probably the minimum time this amount of meat needed to be cooked. It was A LOT of meat. the chamber was pretty much filled with pork. also the temperature was on the lower end of the smoking range for the first 4 hours. I wrapped the meat for the last hour and a half, i probably could have wrapped it earlier.