A Catastrophic Bit of Barbecue – The Slump

Why hello there, and FUCK YESTERDAY. I’m your author, Jon O’Guin, and now that I am safely in Thursday’s embrace, hold shit, Wednesday ate a fucking bag of DICKS for me.(ED: Thursday is not doing much better) It had everything: pain, frustration, terror, panic, irritation, boredom, and exhaustion. So SURPRISE, you get to hear about it, while I don’t get to sleep, because OF COURSE I FUCKING DON’T.

And to make this at least VAGUELY food related, we’re going to talk about the thing I’m currently fighting with: delicious, beautiful chunks of pork. (Which are maybe the only parts of the day’s troubles I take full credit for: I fucked this one up, not the pork)

I’m not happy with you, but it’s not your fault.

Today’s post is also going to be fairly short (ED Oh, how Naïve 12 AM Jon was.) because it’s really just me kvetching, because I didn’t have time to think of something better with all the shit going on. You think that’s dumb? Leap that wall, if you’re so great! (Nice. 18 year old movie reference. Solid opening.)

For context: I have spent the last week and a half being more of a shut-in than usual, and that is by Jon “I have gone multiple days without speaking to another human, and we are currently in a pandemic that forces people to stay home” O’Guin standards. (Gotta work on shortening that nickname. Kinda lucky we HAD a pandemic: it was NONSENSE for the first couple years I had it.) And the reason is because I am going out of town this weekend, to a little reunion thing, and since the group is over the bigger end of recommended groups (11ish people, all told), we’re all taking extra precautions.

And in typical Jon mode, I decided to do something kind of showy and dumb: I got signed up to do “Barbecue” for dinner the first night. To which I decided “hey, you said Barbecue, not cook-out, so we are getting some low-and-slow cooked meats with this.” I planned time for it, and that plan was “go get meat on Tuesday or Wednesday, cook the long stuff Wednesday/Thursday, drive out Friday, reheat the fancy stuff there, also cook some burgers and hot dogs, and serve.”

BIG. MEATY. DOGS.

Now, the plan has ALREADY had some ‘fun’ chaos inflicted on it: two weeks ago, our location cancelled on us, and the best place we found to replace it wasn’t in the same state, so while I was GOING to be driving 2.5-3 hours to get to the event, I am now driving around 5.5-6. Which is fine, other than it means have less time on Friday to finish things up…and less time on Sunday after I get back to do things like “cook” or  “write a post”.

And that’s no one’s fault (other than the previous location’s owners), it’s just bad luck What it led to is more of a mess: obviously, I’m either going to need to delay, skip, or pre-write Monday’s post now. To do that, I need to COOK Monday’s post before I leave. Also, I have a post for the Patreon page that I have to write up. And Thursday’s post. So between last Sunday and the end of today, I ended up needing to: cook at LEAST 4 recipes (preferably 5), and WRITE 4 posts, in 4 days. So Sunday I knuckled down, and cooked the Patreon thing, and Monday’s post. Two of the recipes down. Great start to the week.   

Where shit really went wrong is the last couple days. Monday was all about the post, and as well as some technical stuff and established digital social events. Tuesday I had some more stuff to do, all of which was perfectly reasonable and enjoyable…but ended up spaced out in a way so I was unable to go shopping…but I DID write up the Patreon post. So my schedule for Wednesday was a little tight, but not insane: go buy the food, cook the pork shoulder, upload the Patreon post, and write Thursday’s post. The pork shoulder is supposed to take like, 6-8 hours*, uploading a post normally takes about an hour or two for editing and so on. Writing takes about 3-5 hours between research, writing, and text-based editing, but I can do the cooking and the writing at the same time. Not that rough a day. Or so I thought.

Here’s a list of everything I had to do today, and the things that went wrong, presented in bullet form, to conserve some space, since I’ve already been whining a while.

• Attempted to take a shower. I say “attempted” because, fun fact: our water heater is broken, the service guy is not coming for another week or two, and it turns out that I have lost most of my tolerance for cold showers. I basically was able to rinse some vital areas and my hair a little, and then bailed. This turned into a bad idea: In my hurry after the shower, I failed to fully dry off, and tossed my clothes on while I was still slightly wet.

• Grabbed a quick breakfast, which was only irritating because Kado demanded two breakfasts, which ended our supply of the food she will eat WITHOUT crying about it for 45 minutes.

• Went to Costco, which was mostly fine, other than some minor communication quibbles…and that so much walking caused my slightly-wet skin in my “vital areas” to chafe to hell and back in an offensively short amount of time, inflicting a mildly painful limp on me for the rest of the day. (Editor’s note: and the next morning.)

• Discovered the cooler I brought to Costco was too small, meaning I should have done the OTHER errand I had to do first, because with the too-small cooler, I now was on a time-limit.

• Rushed to the other errand (picking up a quarterly spirits club)…only for our package to be stored in an unexpected location, leading the woman helping me to need several minutes to find it.

On the drive home, almost got into a car accident on the highway. Oh, yeah, you assumed all of these were going to be minor shit. NO, my friends: while driving with the flow of traffic (read, about 10 miles over the speed limit), we rounded a corner, and discovered that there had been a prior accident, so everyone in the left lane had to merge into the right lane…which had now filled up with all the people having to slow down to pass the accident. So, roughly 4-5 cars, of which I was the second-to-last, all had to slow down SHARPLY. I stopped about 6-10  feet from the car in front of me, veering slightly to be sure I would do it in time, while the car behind me stopped…I think a matter of INCHES from my fender. The cloud of smoke from their tires trying to stop was billowing around me, that’s how close we were.

To which I went “well, that was a little spooky”, and then immediately started to drive away, merging into the right lane.  It wasn’t until I saw the driver get out of their car, and have either a sob or a retch that I realized “oh shit, that was MUCH spookier for them,” and “oh shit, they might have hit me, and I’m just fucking driving away!” which utterly broke my ability to drive for a couple minutes: I pulled over on the OPPOSITE side of the road, along the median, and then had to dart across, just in time for a cop from the accident up ahead to come back and ask me, in a somewhat incredulous and judgmental tone (which I fully deserved) “What are you DOING?” A quick explanation that I was worried the other driver needed help, and didn’t want to drive off if she needed insurance info, and he popped over to talk to her. Everything turned out to be fine, and we drove off. Total time…maybe 6-8 minutes.

That’s about the same amount of time this door was open before the chickens jumped in.
Right in the…Nick of time.

Now, you might have forgotten, in the intensity of that moment, that I had thawing goods in the back of the car, but I assure you: I didn’t. I had probably $100 of food in the car that I did NOT have time for it to go bad and need to replace it.  So I blasted home, unloaded the car…and then kind of dissolved for about 15 minutes. The stress of that moment kind of washed into me, along with the physical exertion of carrying all the stuff I got from Costco into the house…which I literally, only JUST NOW, realized I could have done much easier by parking my truck in the Driveway. (I normally park on the side of our cul-de-sac, about 30 feet from the Driveway…but there was no one else home, and I was going to need to take another trip before they got back.  I hauled like, 130 pounds of groceries an extra 30 feet in 80 degree heat while limping, because I didn’t think about where I parked.)

…and I couldn’t even fully fall apart in that window, because, remember, Costco didn’t have the pork I needed to cook today. So I had to run to a different store, buy pork (and cat food), so I could go home, and start cooking my pork at like, 3:30. So a 6-8 hour cooking project started at almost 4 PM. Nice.

Anyway, I was doing a very simple method, derived from Kenji Lopez-Alt’s recent video: just a bone-in pork shoulder, simply rubbed.

What’s weird is that this isn’t that blurry of a picture: it’s that the translucency of the rub make it LOOK ‘fuzzy’.

And popped into an indirect heat cooker (our Traeger smoker) for 6-8 hours*. That’s it. All you need. Other than to use a different wood, as it turns out the wood chips I had originally put into the smoker weren’t great for pork, so I had to quickly switch them.

At which point, I let myself really just flop down: I had a couple hours to upload the Patreon thing, hours of cooking taking care of themself, I could take a breather. I hopped onto Facebook, joined a conversation discussing the methodologies of determining healthcare costs, and after about 20 minutes of research, I was feeling better, and about to submit my findings to the group…when my computer crashed, undoing all that work.

The next couple hours…unraveled much like before.

• After rebooting my computer, it took about 10 minutes to rebuild what I had and send it in. At which point I just watched a Youtube video to do something that didn’t really need my brain engaged, so I could zone out again.

• Nate came home, and we went to get dinner, and, having had a low-grade craving for a root-beer float for a while, I attempted to order one, only to learn the ice cream machine was not functioning. (They did have a sign saying their SHAKE machine was broken, but I figured they were separate entities) When we got home, I also discovered that instead of a medium Sprite, I had received a medium Soda water. (which, honestly: healthier, so I wasn’t too mad about that, other than as “oh, good, here’s the 8th or 9th thing today going wrong)

• At this point, the limp from the scratch had created chafing, so walking between the upstairs and downstairs was mildly painful…did I mention the smoker is on the upstairs deck?

• While attempting to wrap up and upload the Patreon post, my phone just decided to…not. It refused to upload photos to Google. I have had two pictures uploading for the last THREE HOURS. I legitimately do not know if I will HAVE PICTURES for this post right now.

And the big one currently: we gotta talk about the asterisk. See, if you watched Kenji’s video linked earlier, you might have noticed that my brain misfiled some important details about the recipe.

It is not a recipe that takes 6-8 hours. It SERVES 6-8 PEOPLE. It TAKES 8-12 hours.

I started it just before 4 PM.

I had to turn on the deck lights, which are disturbingly millennial.

The lights in my room just automatically turned off, which they are programmed to do about 18 minutes before 2 AM, so that I can call it a night.

The pork is not out of the smoker. It’s supposed to be done at around 200 degrees. When I checked it an hour ago, it wasn’t even 170 at the thickest part. THIS is because of what’s called “the slump”: when barbecuing, the low-and-slow heating eventually hits a point where the water evaporating from the meat becomes EQUAL TO the amount of heat being pumped in. So the ‘cooking’ can’t continue until the slump ends…and the only thing that ends the slump is time.

Which is a great culinary metaphor: I am currently exhausted, my leg achess, I stink from amount of sweat from exertion, heat, and PANIC I put out today, as well as several hours of cherrywood smoke. I am stuck waiting for pork to finish smoking…so I can smoke ANOTHER THING starting in about 8 hours at this point. My reach has exceeded my grasp, turning and turning in a widening gyre, etc etc.

So…yeah. I am DEAD CENTER in the middle of a slump, I would say.  

Pork LOOKS amazing, though.

We’re 8 hours after that first pic.

Gonna be fantastic, once it’s done. Or at least it BETTER BE.

3 AM Update: It has begun raining. The slump is still on-going. The cat has come out, and, surprised to find someone to harass, has demanded some of the new food I bought her. She also informs me, via biting, that early morning is not an acceptable time for petting.

4 AM update: I’ve started “watching” Television to pass the time, rather than hobble up and down the stairs every 30-40 minutes in the hope that the meat has decided to continue cooking. By “watch”, I mean “I cannot hear the words being uttered, as the volume is too low, but I can observe movement, and hear that people ARE talking, which gives the lizard part of my brain something to focus on”. I realize that I never turned off the fans we use to cool the living room, because I planned to do it when I went to bed. (begins weeping)

$:45 AM: Oh god it’s happening. The pork is now registering 180, even 190  in some spots. That means this should be done in the next…half an hour? Hour? There is light at the end of the tunnel.
 
5 AM: Nate gets up. He laughs, because I had told him the pork was supposed to be done “around 8 or 10 PM”. I explain that this slump has FUCKED me, pushing the recipe 2-3 hours past when it SHOULD have ended, and lament that I’m going to finish this pork just in time to pass out for 3-4 hours, and then get up and smoke THE BRISKET.  Nate points out that, since Mom will be awake from 6 to 9, why don’t I just put the brisket in BEFORE passing out, so then I avoid the risk of this again, and I can take naps during the day if needed. It is the single smartest thing he has said in years.

%:30 AM: The pork is out of the Smoker, and resting

THIS one, on the other hand, is blurry because my vision was fucked up by that point.

IN the interim, I’ll trim the brisket and get it ready to put in.

6:15 AM: IT’S DONE!

BEHOLD ROUGHLY 3.5 POUNDS OF MEAT. MAYBE MORE. I DIDN’T WEIGH IT.

I HAVE ENDURED, AND SUCCEEDED!  FUCK YOU, SLUMP! FUCK YOU, RAIN! FUCK YOU, MY OWN LEG!

The bark tastes, in my opinion, pretty damn good. The meat itself is a little bland (which is really my fault: this is super-market pork, so it’s not the best meat in terms of natural flavor, and I didn’t have time to really let the rub penetrate the meat before cooking. So the edges are delicious, and the middle is perfectly fine, if somewhat unremarkable, Pork.

Oh Look, a bed. Goodbye. Daylight Jon can upload this.

1 PM update: What do you MEAN, 503 Service Unavailable, Squarespace?

2:30 PM update: What do you MEAN you’ve been “uploading” one picture for TWO FUCKING HOURS, PHONE? YOU ARE CONNECTED TO THE SAME NETWORK AS THE COMPUTER. YOU ARE 2 FUCKING FEET FROM THE COMPUTER.

MONDAY: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH