BBQ Shoulder Injection

Mostly for competition purposes it is customary to inject shoulders prior to placing them on the smoker, and in some cases a second injection prior to coming off the smoker. There are numerous reasons for doing so (at least on paper).

Two main common ingredients in most shoulder injections are a juice or cider (usually apple) and a vinegar, either white or apple is usually used. Both the acidic value of the juice or cider and the vinegar have properties to help break down the collagen in the shoulder which is what makes a pork shoulder sweet and juicy.


Chris Lily Shoulder Injection - Posted on The BBQ Forum and found in Peace Love and barbecue. Recommended for pork shoulder (butt) Chris and Don McLemore own Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q.

3/4 cup apple juice
1/2
cup
water
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup salt
2 tbsp
Worcestershire sauce

Inject shoulder with injection solution using 1/2 oz. (1 tablespoon) per pound. I also add some powder-ized dry rub ( I use a coffee grinder). This allows the spices to dissolve in the mixture (we also heat ours up to blend all the sugars and flavorings. Here are a few more ideas to add, just don't add them all in one injections - experiment with different ingredients to accomplish different flavorings.

Maple syrup, corn syrup, apple cider vinegar, white vinegar, powder-ized dry rub, honey, kosher salt, seasoned salt, liquid smoke (never admit to that), soy sauce, a few tablespoons of your home made sauce, use a different type of juice or add a different type to the apple juice, lime juice, lemon juice, dry mustard, Spanish smoked paprika and the list goes on. Remember, too much of a good thing is usually not good.

Keep your amounts proportional to each other.Have fun with it. P.S. - for shoulders I use a brine pump similar to the one above.

Smoking a BBQ Shoulder Memphis Style

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.