As you can tell by the photos we slather our shoulders in Mustard prior to adding the dry marinade. Not sure we are going to keep doing that, but there are good reasoning's behind the procedure. For both whole hog and shoulders, the mustard cooks off and leaves no mustard taste or looks behind. As a team, we are debating whether we are going to continue the mustard process as our smoker is a moist smoker and we are not sure if changing to a non-mustard procedure might not be better. We'll experiment and decide.
So why use mustard? One, it provides a moist texture to apply the dry rub on which helps the rub to adhere to the shoulder better. Secondly, the vinegar in the mustard helps to penetrate the shoulder and assist in the breaking down of the collagen. Obviously the vinegar does not penetrate too far in to the shoulder, for that we use an injection (we'll get to later).
We then hit our shoulders with our own recipe of spices and allow it to marinate for a while, then on to the smoker they go for a good smoke, usually four hours or so. After that they get wrapped and are allowed to go through the rendering process while foiled, then come out to allow the bark to firm up (they also get a coating of our sauce). Hit it with our finishing rub, which is simply a slightly sweeter version of our dry rub and we're ready for the Memphis BBQ Network Judges to show up.
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