Eight-Time World Championship Pork Shoulder

The whole pork shoulder is exactly that, a hog’s entire front haunch. The average shoulder weighs sixteen to twenty pounds and is the shape of a large shoe box. The shoulder is comprised of two different cuts: the “picnic,” which is the lower portion and includes the leg bone, and the “butt,” which is the top of the shoulder, including the blade bone. In the barbecue world, restaurant cooking is different from competition cooking. A restaurant customer expects to enjoy a full plate of barbecue and to enjoy the last bite as much as the first. Judges at competitions, on the other hand, usually taste only a bite or two for each entry they are served. If your meat doesn’t grab the judges’ taste buds and make them whimper with pleasure, the blue ribbon is history. In fact I once heard a master barbecue judge say, “You can’t win with good eatin’ barbecue.” It is very difficult to walk the fine line between good eatin’ and good scorin’ ’Q, but this recipe does it. It takes the base flavors and cooking techniques that Big Bob Gibson always used in his restaurant and amplifies them for competition. We add a seasoning blend to enhance the flavor of the bark—the outside crust of the meat—and we use injection to increase the moisture in the pork and permeate the meat throughout with flavorings. We use the same vinegar-based sauce that Big Bob created in the early 1920s to finish the shoulder. These modifications resulted in six straight first place finishes at the Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest in the pork shoulder category, an added victory at the Jack Daniel’s World Championship Invitational Barbecue, and a first place at the largest barbecue contest in the world, the American Royal.