3-31 Smoking Again

Smoking a pork roast on the left and brisket on the right

We had absolutely nothing on our agenda for today so we decided to smoke something for dinner. The other day when we went shopping we had bought a pork roast and I had a brisket thawed so this morning we started smoking both. I crawled out of bed earlier than usual to take the meat out of the refrigerator so it could sit at room temperature for about an hour before smoking. I was starting to put salt and pepper on the meat when Larry came out, he was surprised I was awake already. I asked him to finish seasoning the meat because I think he is better at it. While he was doing this I went back to bed. I was only going to sleep another hour but I ended up sleeping a couple of hours. When I finally got back out of bed Larry had the meat smoking. Larry continually monitored the temperature keeping it between 200 and 225. We smoked the pork roast for seven hours and the meat temperature was 170 degrees. It came out perfect, and I do mean perfect, it was as good as any smoked pork we have ever bought. We ended up smoking the brisket for about 10 hours. We have read a lot about smoking brisket and discovered it is difficult to determine how long to smoke it. You have to go by how tender it is. Some will be done in as little as 6 hours and others will take 10 or 12 hours. Everytime we smoke something we learn a little more. While the meat was smoking I worked on my puzzle, I started reading another book called Miracle Cure by Harlan Coben and I worked out. We drove Flo crazy by being home all day and going in and out of the back door checking on the meat.

The pork roast before it was sliced

The pork roast after it was sliced

The finished brisket

The brisket after it was sliced

In the evening we rented the movie Carol from Amazon. It stars Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara. It was a good movie. We also watched a couple of TED Talks. We had a very relaxing day hanging around the house.