Smoked pork, buccaneer style

This may be one of the few times you'll ever see just meat here on Weekly Delicious. This is what happens when you're a college student with a limited budget and even more limited means of production. A bit of background:

For my Pirates of the World final project, we could do whatever we wanted so long as we could relate it back to pirates. So I decided to apply what I learned about the history of pirates by producing my take on the smoked meat (boucan) that gave the buccaneers their name (boucanier). The nature of this is really kind of haphazard and inexact in many aspects, since... well, pirates were like that. Feel free to scale up or scale down as you like.

Ingredients:
- About 5 lbs of pork loin
- About 5 - 6 tablespoons of whole allspice
- About 5 - 6 tablespoons of kosher salt (you can use regular salt if you want)

Materials:
- About 6 handfuls of hickory wood chips (or whatever smoking chips you have)
- A grill
- Aluminum foil
- Mortar and pestle
- Meat or probe thermometer

Preparation:
Put your wood chips to soak in water for about an hour. I just used my ever so fancy multipurpose bucket. While the chips are soaking, crush the allspice in the mortar and pestle until it's about look of coarse pepper. Now, why did I make you grind your own allspice when you can just buy preground at the store? 1. It's a different, better flavor and 2. Pirates didn't have preground allspice, silly.

Mix your freshly ground allspice and salt together (you can even give it another smashing with the mortar and pestle, if you want the salt crystals to help you grind up the allspice a bit more) and apply liberally to the pork. Not enough? Just make more, because you want all of the meat completely covered. Made too much? You're not trying hard enough at covering the meat. Let the meat sit in the fridge like that until your wood chips are ready.

Hands on works well.

After an hour, take your wood chips out of the water and put them in the middle of a two large sheets of foil (lay two sheets on top of each other to double them up), leaving plenty of room around the edges. Fold those edges up and towards the middle, while making sure to not seal it up completely. Basically, you're folding this packet up like how an envelope is folded, but instead of closing, you want to leave some space for the smoke to get out of the top. A very flat volcano, if you will.

Light your grill and have it going about as low as you can manage it (I tried for a temperature of about 210° to 220° F). If you're using gas, only light one side of the grill. If you're using charcoal, only put the charcoal on one side. Put your wood chip packet (smoke hole side up) on the flame/coals, under the grill grate.

Cooking:
Take your pork out of the fridge and place your thermometer in the thickest cut you have. Put your meat on the side of the grill that doesn't have the smoke packet under it. You aren't cooking with the direct heat of the coals, you're cooking with the smoke and the ambient heat of the grill.

My smoke packet is in the back, so my meat is in the front.

Close the lid. You're aiming for the pork to be about 170° F. You could probably go a little less if you're impatient or brave, but I'm a bit wary of any meat that's not guaranteed cooked into that safety zone that kills off anything nasty. About half way through the cooking process (170 - your starting temperature, then divide that by 2. That's your halfway cooking temperature point), flip the meat.

Look. Smoke. That's supposed to be there.

I started off a bit colder than I was supposed to (plus it was autumn, so it was colder outside), so I took 4 hours to cook this all the way through. What I ended up doing was checking and recording the temperature of the grill every half hour so I knew how long I had to wait and if I had to make any adjustments. It may seem like forever, and you'll be tortured by the amazing smell, but it's all worth it. When you reach 170° F, remove from the grill and place on a clean platter and allow to sit for at least 10 minutes to keep the juices from running out when you cut the meat.

It's absolutely amazing hot off the smoker, but surprisingly also really good cold from the fridge too (especially if you precut it into snacking sized medallions). It's good reheated, it's good a week or two later too (That's why the pirates smoked the meat, the smoking process, salt, and allspice act as preservatives). It's just good.