Pernil
Hand me a pork shoulder and I know what to do with it—rub it down, throw it in the smoker, let it slow cook at 225 degrees until the fat and connective tissue break down and leaves nothing but the most tender, juicy pork that can easily be pulled by hand. For all my barbecuing years, this has worked fairly flawlessly for me, so you can imagine how hard it was to throw out my experience and go an opposite direction when deciding to tackle pernil—a Puerto Rican favorite of a pork shoulder covered in a garlicky marinade, then roasted.
First instinct to be broken is the cut of the shoulder. For pulled pork, I like to use the butt, which the top half at the elbow joint. Pernil, on the other hand, uses the lower half of shoulder—commonly called the picnic—which has more connective tissue than the butt and is usually sold with the skin on. I was familiar with the cut, using it in my earliest days of pulled pork making because due to its availability at my local grocery. I since changed and seek out the butt mainly due its higher yield (the picnic produced just as good pulled pork in my opinion), so it was weird to go back to a cut that I had made a decision to move away from.
Ditching a dry spice rub, these picnic shoulders were given a wet rub/marinade of garlic, garlic, oil, salt, vinegar, oregano, pepper, and cumin. Unlike a dry rub, whose main purpose is to form the delicious bark, I wanted this marinade to penetrate into the meat, so to facilitate that, slits were cut throughout shoulder and marinade pushed into them in an attempt to fully embed the pork with the garlic-heavy marinade.
After given some time to marinate, the shoulders went into the smoker. As much as I'd have loved to throw some wood chunks in there and let it go for 16 hours at 225, I resisted and went traditional, roasting the shoulders at 350 degrees with no smoke. Cooking at a higher temperature with the absence of smoke means this can also be done over an indirect fire on the grill, or in an oven, but the smoker is still my top choice for keeping the cook going easy and steady for the 5 to 6 hours needed.
What comes out is a totally transformed piece of meat. The skin turns a beautiful red/brown and the exposed meat gets a nice crispness, even without a dry rub. After letting it rest, it was time to pull these babies.
The meat did not have the same fall-off-the-bone tenderness as when done low-and-slow, but it still pulled easily with just a little bit of resistance. Despite the slightly tougher pull, the pork was incredibly juicy and loaded with flavor. The crust had a great garlic bite to it and the meat was full of the porky goodness that makes a shoulder such a tasty cut.
The best part though was the skin. Pulled pork is usually done skin off, pernil, skin on. So at the end, there's the added bonus of cracklings! Not quite totally crisp right out of the smoker, I laid the detached skin on baking sheets and popped them into a 350 degree oven until they got crunchy. I ended up letting the pork go that day, and it went, but I had to put some cracklings aside just for myself, to keep eating throughout the week—my special treat!
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Comments
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Bill Looks killer man! I too get stuck in a southern barbecue-centric mode when I see a shoulder... great to see another approach to that cut of meat. Now that you've done it this way, would you try it with some smoke?
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Mike Wow...yet something else you have done that interests the hell out of me! I absolutely love the crackling idea. I've been "stuck" with the picnic cut before and have always discarded the skin...perhaps I need to re-think this!
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Josh @Bill I would definitely try it with smoke, but it's going to be something different. Pernil gives you a pretty pure pork flavor, adding smoke will be delicious, but I'm not sure I'd call it Pernil then. If you look at the photo of the pulled pernil above, you'll see the charcoal imparted some smoke already, although that flavor was pretty subtle.
@Mike I used to always discard the skin as well, but it's worth the re-think. Probably would still skin it for standard pulled pork though, otherwise you'd lose a large amount of area for the rub/bark. -
Another Mike Chicharrone...
Chicharrone...
I can't leave the skin alone!
Seriously, a big sheet of fresh chicharrone wrapped up in a fresh corn tortilla is as good as it gets. -
Rosa First time that I see someone shreading the meat, traditionally you just cut in chunks, including the skin. Thats probably why it was difficult to pull, because as far as I know is never done. Pernil means leg so when we say pernil we are just refering to the pork leg, the "marinade" is just an adobo (seasoning). So even if you smoke it is a pernil. Good idea in putting the skin in the oven, nothing like crispy pork skin. I always left the chicharrón for last.
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Bay I just served a pernil I grilled up with a little bit of apple wood at the very beginning. I'm Puerto Rican and I served it to my family this Thanksgiving. It was a huge hit. They loved the smokey flavor. I also grilled it using oak natural lump charcoal. I wanted to give it a bit of the "cooked on the spit" flavor. It had an awesome smoke ring on the sides without skin.
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garrett smith you stole this along with the pics from Joshua Bousel. you didn't even credit him for the recipe. Everything is exactly the same. https://www.seriouseats.com/grilling-pernil-puerto-rican-pork-roasted-recipe
What a sham. -
garrett smith I'm a moron it is Joshua who did both articles it doesn't show his name until the very bottom in transparent lettering. My apologies.
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Josh @Garrett Smith No worries, easy mistake to make. I did repost a number of my Serious Eats recipes on this site and I also don't prominently show my name since it's the same author for every recipe.