Hoison BBQ Pork

Chef's notes:

Grilling big hunks of pork on the grill is easy as long as you understand the principles of direct versus indirect heat. You will be using direct heat first as you brown the meat directly over the coals. But once you move the meat off to the side of the coals, you will be cooking with indirect heat. If the meat is cooked over the direct heat the whole time, it will become burned and inedible. Another advantage of cooking with indirect heat is that we add a second element: smoke, which goes with pork very well. And as an added boost, we are saucing our meat too.

Ingredients

  • 4‒5 pounds of pork roast or steak
  • Hoisin Pork Marinade Recipe (link below and to left)

Pork Barbecue Recipe: Marinated with Spicy Hoison Sauce and Barbecued in a Smoky Covered Grill

  1. Choose a chunk of pork and marinate it. The pork here is a big slab of fresh ham roast. I would recommend using a piece of pork shoulder though, as it works much better. Marinate the pork overnight using the pork marinade recipe.
  2. Fire up the grill and brown both sides. Once the charcoal is ashy and hot, grill the marinated pork over it directly to brown each side. Assemble the sauce and cook it down at the same time on the grill.
  3. Then move the pork off to the side. Once the pork is browned on both sides, move it off to the side over the aluminum cake tin. Add a handful of soaked wood chips to the coals and put on the lid. Adjust the vents to halfway open and let it sit for 30 minutes.
  4. Flip the pork every 30 minutes. At the same time, add more soaked chips or charcoal if needed. The inside of the grill should be somewhere between 350‒400 degrees F with the lid on. We want to bring the pork up to 190 degrees slowly over 3‒4 hours.
  5. After four hours on the grill, it should be done. Don’t add more then 10 handfuls of chips to the grill. That would be too smoky in the end. Towards the end of cooking, sauce the meat a few times to glaze it. Remove the meat once it reaches 190 in the middle, and let it rest covered tightly for 30‒40 minutes. Then break it up into edible pieces, add some sauce, and make a sandwich.

Tips & Tricks

  • Use a thermometer to check the internal temperature of the grill. You don’t want it to be hotter then 400 degrees in there. Adjust the vents to cool it down if it is. Do this by decreasing available oxygen by closing the vents a little more.
  • You will also want to rotate the meat as you flip it. The side closer to the heat will get cooked more. If you leave it on that side the whole time it might get burned.
  • Make sure you let the meat rest for at least 30 minutes. In reality, an hour would be even better.
  • Sauce on the side never hurts. Some people are not as big a fan of sauce as others.

Hoisin BBQ sauce recipe

  • The reserved marinade
  • ½ cup hoisin sauce
  • 2 Tbsp tomato paste
  • 1 onion, minced
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • ½ cup water

Combine and cook down until a good consistency. Then mop on the meat every 15 minutes during the last hour of cooking.