Simple traditional Christmas pudding (with leaf lard)

This is adapted from a video by Townsends, who are historical reenactors focused on the early American place and time and have a lot of great traditional recipes. As mentioned on our Cooking/recipes page, since “pasture-raised meat” used to be what everyone ate and knew how to cook, we think our meats often give their best flavor when cooked with old recipes and cooking methods. Of course, we’re not reenactors so we do use modern conveniences whenever we can get away with it!

You will need:

A very large pot with at least one handle

An additional means of boiling water

A clean, cloth kitchen towel without any holes in it

String

A large cooking bowl, a whisk, and a spoon

6 ounces pork leaf lard, frozen

3 eggs

3/4 cup milk

6 ounces AP flour plus plenty of extra

6 ounces dried pitted dates

6 ounces raisins

(optional, but recommended) a handful or two of candied or other dried fruits, such as candied cherries, candied orange peel, candied citron, or whatever you like

a couple pinches of powdered ginger and a couple pinches of nutmeg or about 1/4 nut grated

a few tablespoons brandy (you’re lighting this on fire, not drinking it. Must be 40 proof or higher.)

To make the pudding:

Fill the pot almost to the top with water and start it on high heat to get it boiling.

Dice the leaf lard into pieces ideally less than a quarter inch square, definitely less than a half inch. Make sure it is frozen first, the lard is far easier to work with when frozen. If the kitchen is warm, put the diced lard back in the freezer until you need it.

In the cooking bowl, crack the eggs and whisk them. Add about half the milk and continue whisking. Add the flour a little at a time and continue whisking so there are no lumps. Add the rest of the milk and whisk some more. Switch from whisk to spoon and add all the fruit. Mix very well. Add the spices and stir some more.

Mix in the diced leaf lard. The lard is a key ingredient. As the pudding boils, the lard slowly melts through the flour mixture, leaving small holes to aerate it and greatly improving the texture. You’ll end up with cloudy cooking water that probably has a lot of lard in it, but that’s okay. Whatever fat the pudding needs soak into the flour, and the rest that melts out helps the pudding have a smooth consistency and not turn into a boiled lump of gunk. Use raw, unrendered leaf lard (or suet from beef), not normal back fat or cooking lard. The leaf lard is a neutral flavor and won’t make your pudding taste like pork (though if you wanted to, you could probably include some candied bacon along with the dried fruits.)

Now add a tablespoon or two of flour at a time and stir it in very well. Keep adding flour and stirring it in completely until the mixture is very, very difficult to stir and all the flour is incorporated with no lumps.

Wet the cloth kitchen towel and lay out on a flat surface. Traditional recipes call for boiling the cloth, but wetting it seems to work fine. Sprinkle a good coating of flour over a large circular area in the center of the towel. This is to keep the pudding from sticking too badly.

Spoon the pudding mix onto the flour on the wet kitchen towel. The mix should be very, very thick and difficult to get out of the bowl.

Tie up the towel into a pouch with the pudding mix inside. Make sure (i) there are no gaps, (ii) the string is strong (use two just to be safe) and very tight, (iii) there is an inch or so of extra space inside the pouch for the pudding to expand. Leave a long tail on the string you use to tie up the pudding pouch.

When the water is at a rolling boil, put the pudding pouch in the water, hanging onto the tail of string. Tie the string to a handle on the side of the pot. Ensure that the pudding pouch floats freely in the water and that the string keeps the bottom of the pudding from sinking. You do not want the pudding pouch to rest on the bottom of the pot, as that could cause it to burn.

Partially cover the pot. Begin boiling some more water. Any time a significant amount of steam has escaped from your cooking pot, you need to top it up with boiling water. If you do not, the water level will go down and part of your pudding, held up by the string, will no longer be in the water and will not cook properly. How often you need to add boiling water depends on your pot. Do not add cold water, it must be already boiling so that the pudding continues to cook.

Boil the pudding for at least 2 1/2 and more like 3 hours. Realistically you aren’t going to overcook it, so going longer is fine. You can keep the pudding warm by keeping it in the hot water for a while after you turn off the heat.

To serve, remove the pudding pouch from the water. Untie or cut off the string(s) holding it closed and dump it out onto a platter. Yes, the kitchen towel that just came out of boiling water is hot. To check doneness, stick a long skewer through the pudding; it should come out clean.

Let the pudding rest for a few minutes to let some of the excess water steam off. When ready to serve, take it to the table and pour a few tablespoons of brandy over the top of the pudding.

Turn down the lights. Have a wet towel and a glass of water handy just in case. And a fire extinguisher, but you can’t eat the pudding if you use a fire extinguisher on it.

Light the brandy on fire. Yes, fire. Sing a Christmas song and admire the blue flames.

Most of the brandy will just fall down to the platter. Carefully pour it off, then light the pudding on fire again to burn off the alcohol. Slice the pudding like bread and serve.

(Optional) The pudding is good as is, but you can also make a pudding sauce. A simple recipe is a half cup butter and a cup sugar, combine in a pot and cook on low heat until the butter is melted, then whisk until the sugar is dissolved. Add about a quarter cup of heavy cream and whisk the sauce some more. Pour the sauce over the slices of pudding.

(Optional) It’s traditional to add brandy to the pudding, and you could certainly do that. The thing is, the pudding tastes really, really good on its own. Perhaps a better option would be to add brandy to the pudding sauce as you’re cooking it. That way you can control how much of the alcohol flavor you want by choosing how much pudding sauce you use, and the pudding itself can still be enjoyed by those who don’t want or can’t have the alcohol.

Easy pork schnitzel

No photos this time. You want photos, send us your own recipe with some photos with permission to post it!

You will need

1 pork leg steak

1/4 cup cooking lard. Real lard, not that processed garbage from the store.

around a cup of flour

1 teaspoon each of salt, pepper, and dried thyme

5 eggs

a cup or two of breadcrumbs or panko

A piece of plastic wrap or wax paper or parchment paper or something like that

A decent frying pan such as a cast iron skillet

a rolling pin or something like it

a knife

tongs, a spatula, or a very high pain tolerance (seriously just use tongs)

Since pigs use them to walk around all day, pork legs get a nice workout and thereby develop a lot of flavor. They also get very tough and need some special care in cooking so as to tenderize them. Ordinarily the rear leg is cured as ham or ground into sausage, and the front leg is turned into roasts for slow cooking or smoking, or cut into steaks which can then be slow cooked (such as in a braise) or smoked. All of these slow cooking methods tenderize the pork. Making schnitzel is a great way to speed up the cooking time while still tenderizing the meat. (It does not, however, save on cleanup time.)

Put the flour on a plate or in a bowl. Mix the salt, pepper, and dried thyme into the flour. Use any kind of grain flour you want.

Crack the eggs into a bowl and mix them.

Put the breadcrumbs on a plate or in a bowl.

Cut the pork leg steak into smaller pieces. For a one inch thick steak, cut pieces about the size of a deck of cards.

Put a piece of pork on a hard surface such as a cutting board or countertop, and place over it a piece of plastic wrap or something like it. Now take your rolling pin or equivalent whack the pork. Once the pork is pounded down to about a quarter-inch thickness you should probably stop and move on to another piece. Don’t try to save time by getting your pork steak cut a quarter-inch thick, because you still need to pound on it to tenderize it. Repeat until all the pork is pounded.

Add lard to the frying pan and apply heat. You want it hot but not insane. Lard has a high smoke point, so if it’s smoking your pan is way too hot, turn it down.

If you are perturbed by sizzling spatters of hot lard on your forearms, get someone else to do the rest of this. Or maybe wear long sleeves.

Using one hand only, and potentially your non-dominant hand, take a piece of pork and put it in the seasoned flour so both sides are covered with flour. Shake off the excess. Take said piece of pounded pork and plop it into the eggs so both sides are covered in egg. Shake off the eggcess. Now gently put it into the breadcrumbs and make sure to get both sides. Excess breadcrumbs can fall off on their own.

Now use the same hand to place the pork into the frying pan. The thimbles of caked-on flour, egg, and breadcrumb on your fingers should help to shield your soft, delicate, dainty fingers from the painfully popping melted lard. You could also use tongs, but whatever you do please do not toss the pork into the hot cooking fat from a distance causing boiling-hot cooking fat to spatter up at you. The problem with using tongs is that you risk the pork slipping out of the tongs too early and causing the hot fat to splash up at you.

Repeat until your frying pan is full, keeping an inch or so between each piece of pork in the pan.

Cook each piece for just a few minutes, then flip using tongs or a spatula with your other hand that isn’t covered in a sticky mess. There’s no point in washing your hands until you’re finished cooking all the pork, and you don’t really have time anyways as these cook quite quickly after being pounded out to a quarter-inch thickness. This is why you may want to use your non-dominant hand to do the breading. After flipping the pieces cook them another few minutes on the other side, then remove from the frying pan. The pork should be cooked through with just a few minutes of cooking on each side; check the first piece to make sure. Repeat until all the pork is cooked.

These are even better with some kind of sauce. Either a brown gravy, a fruit-based condiment such as a chutney, or a mayonnaise-based sauce (“aioli”) such as mayo-and-mustard, mayo-and-relish, or something like that.

Ham hocks and beans

2 tablespoons lard or other cooking fat

2 - 4 smoked ham hocks

a few tablespoons apple cider vinegar

1 pound dry beans such as black beans

1 onion, diced

1 bunch celery, sliced

3 carrots, sliced

minced garlic (as much as you like it)

several large pinches of ground cumin

several large pinches of dry oregano

1/4 cup molasses

2 bay leaves

chicken stock (optional) or salted water

Thanks to Justina’s photography we have a picture this time!

Smoked ham hocks are a great way to add flavor to vegetable-based soups and stews, especially beans. For some people this is very much a traditional New Years meal. While it takes a long time to cook, most of that is just letting it sit on the stove on very low heat, so it’s a pretty low-effort meal for what you get, which is delicious.

Soak the beans overnight in a large pot full of water and defrost the ham hocks.

Start cooking by mid-morning or at the lastest noon in order to have this ready for dinner. Remove the beans from the pot and drain them. Heat lard or another high-heat cooking fat in the pot over medium-high heat. Add the ham hocks and sear them on all sides. Remove ham hocks.

Add diced onion and cook until translucent. Add garlic and celery and continue to cook until garlic begins to brown.

Add carrots and any other vegetables and cook for another minute or so. Most bean soup recipes call for things like green pepper. This is very much a winter-time dish, and green peppers are not in season. Parsnips could be a good addition, or replacement for the carrots. Wintertime greens like kale would fit well. Avoid starchy vegetables like winter squash, as the beans will have enough starch on their own.

Add the beans to the pot. Add chicken stock or water and a pinch or so of salt. Add enough liquid to cover the beans and no more. Add the vinegar. Add the cumin and oregano. If you feel the need to measure, something like a teaspoon or two of each. Add the molasses. Add the bay leaves. Stir everything, then add the ham hocks so they are covered as much as possible by the liquid.

Bring the soup to a boil and then turn down to a very low simmer and…wait. Stir the beans and flip the ham hocks every couple hours. It will likely take several hours for the beans to be tender, and you are also looking to reduce and thicken the broth.

Of course this recipe would work just fine in a crock pot or slow cooker.

When the meat starts pulling off the ham hocks, remove them from the pot. Pull the meat and fat off the bones, discard the bones, and shred the meat and fat with two forks, then return it to the pot of beans and stir. Continue to cook on a low simmer. You can basically keep simmering until you want to eat; the beans will eventually get mushy, but this doesn’t make them taste bad and will only happen after a long time. Everything will just get better the longer it cooks together, and the broth will be better the more it reduces. As the beans break down and release starch into the cooking liquid it becomes creamy and delicious.

A crusty sourdough or rye bread would be good to serve with the soup, to soak up the very flavorful and nutritious cooking liquid.

Whole Chicken, Three Meals

Still no camera, but this is supposed to be so simple as to obviate any need for visual aids. A whole pasture-raised chicken really is a wonderful, nutritious, delicious basis for quite a few wholesome meals. Buying individual parts like chicken breasts or chicken thighs may be convenient, but is far more expensive overall. If you want good chicken meals at a good value, a whole chicken is the way to go.

Meal #1 Roast Chicken

You will need:

A chicken (plucked and processed)

A large, sharp knife

Salt, and other optional seasonings

A large pan or skillet plus an oven, or a grill

First, “Spatchcock” the defrosted chicken.

To do so, remove any innards that have been packed inside the cavity. Then place the chicken breast side down on a firm cutting board. Take your largest, sturdiest, heaviest, sharp knife and cut through the chicken back all along one side of the spine. Press the two halves down and pull apart so that the chicken flattens out. Take the knife and score along the center of the inside of the breast — the inside of the breastbone. You can cut all the way through to cut the chicken in half, or simply score the flesh in the center to make it easier to flatten the chicken out. Preparing the chicken in this way reduces cooking time and helps to create a more even cooking temperature throughout the chicken.

Cook the chicken. We almost always use a grill to save on dish cleanup, but if you like doing dishes you can cook the chicken in a heavy pan or skillet in the oven, in a dutch oven-type pan with lid on the stovetop, or even directly on the oven rack (with a pan underneath to catch the drips). First, season the chicken with your seasoning of choice, then place in your cooking apparatus so that the spatchcocked chicken is reasonably flat. It is better to start on a relatively high heat until you see the outside beginning to brown, and then turn down the heat if necessary to cook the chicken to temperature without burning the outside.

Don’t overcook. Use a probe thermometer to check doneness. (If you don’t need a probe thermometer to check doneness, you probably also don’t need to be reading a basic description of how to cook chicken.) Test it out and make sure it works: the probes can sometimes become mis-calibrated. The technology of a thermometer is simple, so expensive is not better. In order to instantly kill all potentially harmful bacteria in the chicken, you need to cook it to 165 degrees Fahrenheit. However, if you cook until the internal temperature of, say, the breast, is 165 and then remove the chicken from the fire, the heat from the outside of the chicken will continue to transfer inward over the next few minutes and your internal temperature will reach points well over 165. So remove the chicken well before it reaches the desired temperature, perhaps at 160. However, even this will overcook the meat. Read on!

Safe temperature vs. safe temperature. Pasteurization works to kill bacteria at very high temperatures essentially instantly, or at somewhat high temperatures held over a longer time. We don’t care if the harmful bacteria die right away or if they die after 10 minutes, so long as they aren’t there when we are eating the chicken. Cooking chicken to 145 degrees internal temperature for 9 or 10 minutes appears to be enough time to kill the harmful bacteria which would also be killed if you nuke the chicken to 165. So, remove the chicken from heat once it hits 145, keep it in a relatively sheltered, warm spot (you might want to cover it if outdoors) and let it rest for at least 10 minutes, checking with the thermometer that it stays at or above 145 for that amount of time. 145-50 degrees is a much better temperature to bring out the chicken flavor without drying it out.

Don’t worry too much if you overcook it. Be safe. Warning: if you don’t cook your chicken to 165 degrees, you do need to hold it at or above temperature for a sustained period (10 minutes at 145 degrees). That’s going to require some extra attention and measurement. We’ve frequently cooked our chickens to 190 because we are busy and can’t be bothered to constantly check the temperature, and while it’s not quite as good and parts are a bit chewy, it’s still fine and you can use it as an excuse to make some gravy.

Note: If you’re concerned about overcooking the chicken — that is, you don’t trust yourself to take it off the heat in time (perhaps you are trying to do this while juggling other tasks?), OR if you’re concerned about undercooking the chicken — that is, you read everything above about not cooking to too high a temperature, but you’re cooking for someone immune-compromised, or you don’t Trust The Science of how pasteurization works, or for some other reason you really want to turn the heat up to 11 on this bird, then try brining the chicken overnight. Boil a few cups of water with about a quarter to half cup each of salt and sugar and perhaps some aromatic herbs and spices, until the salt and sugar dissolve. Then add cold water (or ice) to cool and dilute the brine. Put the chicken in a pot and pour in enough brine to completely cover the chicken. You can also do this in a (clean) cooler, and then fill the cooler with enough ice that the chicken/brine stays at a safe 35 degrees F (ideal refrigerator temperature). A properly-brined chicken is a lot more forgiving of high heat, so you can let it go to 165 without worrying about drying it out. Just make sure to drain the chicken and pat it dry or you’ll get soggy skin, and remember that you’ve already added some seasoning with your brine, so you can probably ease up on any extra seasonings applied before cooking.

Meal #2 Chicken Quesadillas (or Chicken Tacos, or Chicken Salad, or Chicken Casserole, or Pizza Topping, or Puff Pastry Chicken Pies…)

Clean up the carcass — but don’t work too hard. Once you’ve had your meal and the chicken is cooled down, tear off any major pieces of meat left on the carcass. Don’t try to get every little piece from all those bones in the back, just take off any major pieces you didn’t eat. Chop these up and they can be lunch or dinner the next day. Our go-to is usually quesadillas, because they’re easy to make in a cast-iron skillet and we can hide vegetables inside. Also, reheating the chicken along with something wet (such as melted cheese) seems to help keep it from drying out as much.

Meal #3 Chicken soup (stock)

While this requires adding all the other ingredients of the soup or stew, you are getting the nutrition of chicken bone broth, and if you save your chicken bones and make a big pot of stock you will get multiple meals out of it.

Freeze the bones. It’s not worth making chicken stock out of just one chicken, so freeze the bones and any bits of meat left on them. Just chuck it in a freezer-safe container until you have enough to fill a pot. If you aren’t going to eat the chicken skin, freeze it along with the bones and it will help flavor your soup stock.

How to make bone broth. Start with roasted, cooked bones — these already are. Use enough water to cover the bones but not too much extra. Add a shot of some kind of acid — apple cider vinegar works. The vinegar can help to release nutrients from the bones. The chemical effect is likely minor, however, so skip the vinegar if you don’t have it. Let the pot sit for 10 minutes or so to let the acid do its work, then bring the pot up to a slow boil. Once boiling, reduce the heat to a low, low simmer and cover the pot. Simmer it for as long as you can. Twenty-four hours would be great. You may need to add water periodically to make sure the bones remain covered.

Consider adding chicken feet. There’s no reason your chicken bone broth/stock needs to be gelatinous at room temperature. However, some of us like that and the collagen probably is good for you. It’s unlikely that there is enough collagen in a chicken carcass to produce that gelatinous feel, so the best way to produce that in your chicken bone broth is to add a few (properly cleaned) chicken feet to the pot. Chicken feet have a lot of collagen in them.

Season the broth if you want to. We generally do not pre-season soup stocks. When we defrost the stock later to use it, that’s when we’ll add whatever seasonings and flavors we want. For the same reason we don’t add vegetables or herbs. We do all that when we’re cooking the final dish. Of course, if you already know what you want your stock to taste like, go ahead and season it now.

There is meat on those bones. After your stock is done, or you’re bored waiting for it, pour it through a mesh strainer (or just ladle it out and don’t mind the bits) and put the stock into freezer-safe containers for storage. You’ll be left with the bones, which are likely crumbly and falling apart. Picking the meat out of those bones using your fingers is a somewhat tedious and messy task, but there is likely enough to make a nice addition to the stock and thus to whatever final dish you end up making with it.

What to make from half a hog (one example)

If you’re ordering a half hog from us or from another local family farmer and getting your meat custom cut by a local butcher, you may be wondering what to have the butcher make with all that pork. Here is one example. You could probably copy this and send it to the butcher if you like.

This is relatively simple; you could, of course, be a lot more creative in what you get, and you could keep a lot more of the fat and offal if you want to cook more of it. The amount of extra fat here will make perhaps around 6 pints of rendered lard; by all means keep more for rendering if you want more.

This example has a lot of cured bacon and ham but you will not get as much sausage. You’ll still get a few pounds of sausage though, from the trimmings, so you’ll need to decide what kind of sausage you want. Bulk (loose) breakfast or Italian sausage both tend to be pretty versatile in the kitchen; if you want something like bratwurst they’ll be delicious but butchers normally charge extra as putting sausage in casings is extra work. Worth it if you don’t mind the extra cost! If you want more sausage, two decent options are to grind the ham leg or grind the picnic shoulder. For some other ideas see this post.

Packaging: butcher paper works great. Some butchers will offer vacuum-sealed plastic for an extra cost. This makes it easier to see what you’re pulling out of the freezer, and it’s possible the vacuum seal will prevent freezer burn longer. Throwing a pork barbecue extravaganza for your friends seems like more fun though. Both paper and plastic are good options for freezer storage, so it depends on your preference.

Here is the custom cut example:

SHOULDER

Picnic shoulder roast, bone-in, trim as needed but keep it on the larger size around 6+ pounds if possible, for smoking.

Make a little shoulder bacon, 1 pound packages. Cut the rest of the Boston Butt into a smaller boneless roast or roasts, in the 3 pound range.

LOIN

Pull off the tenderloin and keep it whole. Take out the baby-back ribs as well and keep as a whole rack.

Make double-thickness boneless pork chops, 2 per package. Keep a good 3/4 inch or so of fat on the the chops.

Add the pork sirloin to the sausage grind.

BELLY

Spare ribs yes, whole rack.

Standard bacon, 1 pound packages.

HAM

Cure the ham and take some center-cut bone-in ham steaks, 3/4 inch thick, one per package.

Keep the butt and shank parts of the ham whole, so these are two smaller hams in the 3-pound range in addition to the center-cut ham steaks.

OTHER

Smoke the hocks.

Make some jowl bacon, 1 pound packages.

Package about 10 pounds of back fat and about 5 pounds of leaf lard.

Package any extra bones for soup stock. Yes to neck bones if available.

Split the feet for stock.

Package a couple pounds of pork skin, enough to make a batch of pork rinds but not go crazy.

Heart and liver, yes (if available). No to the rest of the offal.

Pork Shashlik (Skewers) with Pork Stew Meat

The acidic marinade is the key ingredient

This is a method, not a recipe. We’re grilling chunks of pork on skewers, preferably over charcoal. With our Anchor Ranch Farm pork, pieces like the (already cut up) Pork Stew Meat work well, but if you’re buying leaner pork from somewhere else you’ll want to cut chunks from some of the fattier portions such as the picnic shoulder.

One traditional and great-tasting marinade is made from finely-chopped (or food-processored) onion. You’ll want a large amount of onion, maybe half as much as you have pork. Alternatively, you could use some other flavorful vinegar such as apple cider vinegar and put some diced onion in it along with the meat. Add any other spices or flavorings you want to the marinade. Salt and pepper and garlic go well.

For the best taste, let your pork soak in the marinade overnight in the refrigerator.

Now grill

That’s pretty much it. Use a high heat (grilling, not barbecue). Put the meat on skewers so you can turn it easily to make sure the center is cooked without burning the sides. Do not put anything except meat on the skewers: if you want to grill vegetables put them on separate skewers, as they take a different amount of time to cook.

The overnight marinade in a flavorful acid is key. Marinading does not make meat more tender; that’s why you need a decent fat content in the meat. It will, however, add flavor and the acid/onion marinade holds up well to charcoal grilling..

You’ll want to eat this with something that can cut the acidity. Mayonnaise or some kind of aoli, maybe a tzatziki or yogurt sauce.

Slow cooking meat outdoors (barbecue/smoking without a smoker)

Cooking with Convection

We use a Pit Barrel Cooker. We don’t know them or have any kind of business relationship with them, it just works really well. Of course, if you have the time and materials, you could make a barrel cooker yourself.

Alternatively, you can set up a charcoal grill for indirect heat. The kettle-style grills are best for this,

but you can do it with pretty much any style of charcoal grill. That’s the way we did it for years. It takes a little more work and isn’t as easy and fool proof, but you can do it!

1. You’re going to want to use charcoal briquettes. It’s going to be very difficult (impossible) to set up a regular grill for barbecue/smoking while using lump charcoal.

2. The Snake/Ouroboros. Around the inside perimeter of the grill make a line of briquettes just touching each other. This is why you have to use briquettes, so they are uniform size. You’re going to light these in one spot and then let the flame slowly travel around the circle. With only a few coals lit at a time, you’ll get an approximation of constant, low heat.

3. Put a pan of water in the middle of the “snake”. This will act as a heat sink to further ensure a relatively constant heating temperature.

4. Put your meat on the cooking grill directly in the middle of your briquette snake. Ideally it won’t also be above your pan of water — the aerosolized drippings hitting the hot metal of your grill help provide flavor — but if you have to, it’s not the end of the world.

5. Adjust your vents so that the air (and thus smoke) flows across your meat. Remember hot air rises. If you just have a top and bottom vent, close up the top vent and barely prop open one side of the grill. Air will come up through the bottom vent, but the smoke will be unable to go out the top, so the smoke will surround your piece of meat until it finally leaks out the side of the grill. Keep in mind that air => fire so if your coals are burning too hot, close your intake vent (on the bottom) a bit more! (If your grill doesn’t have adjustable air vents you should throw it out.)

6. You can add flavor with wood chips. Soak chips of some suitable wood. such as a fruit wood, in water, then make a little foil boat and send your wood chips to Valhalla in the fiery blaze. This prevents them from burning up right away, so you get the benefit of the wood smoke longer. You’ll want to do this at the beginning of the cook, as that’s when the most smoke flavor will penetrate the meat. You can also smoke with flavors besides wood, such as tea or dried herbs.

7. Get a probe thermometer. For pulled pork you want to slowly bring the internal temperature of the roast to around 195 to 205 degrees F. Other kinds of meat require a different temperature.

8. “Barbecue” is slow cooking until the meat is pull-apart-tender. “Grilling” is for small pieces of meat on skewers, or fish, or vegetables. Grilling large cuts of meat just dries them out. Steakhouses never grill their meat. You should stop too.

Finishing in the oven is okay

Slow-barbecue-smoking a large piece of meat on a charcoal grill can pose a lot of problems, but as long as you keep the heat low and adjust the ventilation properly, none of these problems really matter. Do not let perfect become the enemy of the good. It’s possible that your coals will go out before the meat is done. Another frequent problem is “stall”: after a few hours the meat gets to within 20 or 30 degrees of being fall-apart-tender done, and then the temperature increase stalls (because thermodynamics). If you encounter these or any other problems, just remove the meat from the grill, wrap it in foil, and finish it in the oven. The first few hours are the most important, because that’s when most of your smoky barbecue flavor is able to penetrate the meat. Finishing it in the oven after a few hours smoking on the grill will be almost as good as keeping it in the smoker the whole time. The key is to not rush. Keep the heat low, in the range of 225F or so.